By Rob Smith: Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza wants to get Pacquiao back on their strength training regimen so that he can increase Pacquiao’s strength and get him winning a again. Ariza thinks that Pacquiao has made a mistake by not following his old strength training with Ariza.
Pacquiao lost his last fight to Juan Manuel Marquez, who did a great job of increasing his own strength with his strength coach Angel Heredia.
Ariza has a lot of respect for what Heredia was able to do with Marquez with building up his muscle strength while keeping Marquez’s weight the exact same as it was. Heredis built up Marquez’s body and was able to replace the fat on his frame with muscle, which made him a much different fighter than he’d been in the three prior fights with Pacquiao.
Ariza said to Doghouseboxing.com “In a perfect world, I would want Manny to adopt the strength and conditioning program all over again from day one. Then I’d like him to have a tune-up fight to get familiar with that feeling again. After that then Marquez again and let me do my thing to help.”
For Ariza to get Pacquiao on his old strength program, which worked wonders for Pacquiao in the past after he moved up to welterweight, Ariza will have to be able to convince Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach as well as Pacquiao about the benefits of restarting the strength training. Pacquiao might be a little more receptive now after being on the receiving end from punches by Marquez with his new muscles.
Pacquiao claims that Marquez wasn’t hitting any harder than he had in the past, but that just doesn’t seem logical. Sure, you can try and explain away Pacquiao’s knockout in the 6th being a case of him not seeing the shot coming, but what about the knockout in the 3rd? Pacquiao saw that shot coming and yet he was still knocked down. Pacquiao was never knocked down in the three previous fights with Marquez.
Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has no interest in putting Pacquiao in any tune-up fights. He ruled them out completely in a recent interesting, saying that it’s completely unnecessary. In place of a tune-up, Arum wants Pacquiao to take a long break from boxing and return in either June or September. He also wants him to get his brain checked out again by a good brain hospital to make sure Pacquiao didn’t suffer any damage in getting knocked out by Marquez earlier this month.