ARIZA AMAZED AT PACQUIAO’S POWER
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Wed, 27 Jan 2010
Conditioning expert Alex Ariza who teams up with three-time “Trainer of the Year” Freddie Roach to prepare pound-for-pound boxing icon Manny Pacquiao for his fights, says he is amazed at Pacquiao’s power.
Ariza said Pacquiao moved up from eight to twelve round on the punch-mitts with Roach and was “really good. Good power man, I’m telling you.”
He said when I looked at his body it seems like he hasn’t been off from training since his November 13 WBO welterweight title fight when he stopped Miguel Cotto in twelve rounds at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Ariza said Pacquiao weighed a 150 pounds which is no problem at all since he will be defending his 147 pound title against tough Joshua Clottey on March 13 at the $1.2 billion state-of-the-art Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
Roach’s instructions to clear the gym of onlookers when Pacquiao trains was implemented according to Ariza who said the only non-training member of Team Pacquiao he saw in the gym was Joe Ramos.
Ariza revealed that he hadn’t seen any probable Pacquiao sparring partners in the gym as yet but indicated he wouldn’t be surprised if the first planned day of sparring on Thursday would be brought forward since Pacquiao was looking so good.
Word from the Clottey camp is that the fighter who gave Cotto a rough time in a title fight which many ringsiders felt Clottey won, will set up his training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida starting this weekend.
Clottey’s manager Vinny Scolphino was quoted as saying “Joshua is in great fighting shape right now. He is anxious to get into the ring against Pacquiao.”
In a commendable gesture Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will set aside $1 from every ticket sold for the Pacquiao-Clottey fight as well as all the Top Rank fight cards for the rest of the year to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. Already 25,000 tickets have been sold for the Pacquiao-Clottey fight titled “The Event” which means an initial $25,000 to the fund.
Arum actually launched the fund donation during the spectacular double-header at New York’s Madison Square Garden Theater last weekend when Puerto Rico’s Juanma Lopez won the WBO featherweight title with a crushing win over Steven Luevano and Cuba’s sensational Yuriorkis Gamboa annihilated Tanzania’s Rogers Mtagwa to retain his WBA title.
Arum said “helping people is the right thing to do and we are hoping other promoters will join us.”
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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