Bradley Bout Key to Pacquiao’s Future in Boxing

By Boxing News - 04/10/2012 - Comments

Image: Bradley Bout Key to Pacquiao’s Future in BoxingBy Patrick White: During the promotional tour for his forthcoming fight with Timothy Bradley, Manny Pacquiao has stated that he will adhere much more strictly to the exercise regime recommend by his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza then he did when preparing for his last two fights with Shane Mosley and Juan Manuel Marquez.

Assuming that Pacquiao will honour this commitment, his bout with Bradley has the potential to answer a question that has profound implications for the Filipino champion’s future in boxing: namely, was Pacquiao’s rather lack-lustre performances against Shane Mosley and Marquez a result of irreversible physical decline, or was it a function of the much more reversible factors of failing to adhere properly to the exercise regime stipulated by his strength and conditioning coach?

As it stands there is some reason to believe that Pacquiao may be suffering from physical decline. Having now reached the age of 33 it would not be surprising if Pacquiao’s speed and reflexes had diminished somewhat. I am no expert on the relationship between age and boxing performance but, as far as I understand, it is not uncommon for boxers’ to experience a decline in foot and hand speed in their early to mid thirties. To take just one example – which I acknowledge is not really sufficient to properly demonstrate the point – the 30-year-old Muhammad Ali that fought and dramatically knocked-out George Foreman was not nearly so quick as the 22-year-old Ali who danced around and then knocked-out Sonny Liston.

Furthermore, if you subscribe to the notion that the more a person uses his or her body the quicker his or her body will physically deteriorate – a scientifically naïve theory, but one that has some prima facie plausibility – there is further reason to believe that Pacquiao’s disappointing showing against Mosley and Marquez was as a result of physical decline. Pacquiao turned professional when he was 16 years old, which means that he has been subjecting his body to the intense physical strain of life as a professional boxer for 17 years – over half of his life. He is also known to train exceptionally hard when preparing for a fight. His trainer Freddie Roach has stated in many interviews that during training camps he has to almost force Pacquiao to work at a lower intensity.

On the other hand, Pacquiao’s poor performances against Marquez and Mosley – poor, at least, by his own very high standards – could be plausible explained by his failure to stringently follow the training regime stipulated by Ariza. There is no doubt that strength and conditioning plays a very important role in the performance of professional boxers. A very striking example of this concerns the contrast between Amir Khan’s physical conditioning in two of his recent fights. For his fight with Paul McCloskey Khan did not employ Ariza – who had worked with him for several fights before that – electing instead to work with another strength and conditioning coach. Although Khan was getting the better of McCloskey before the fight was stopped due to a cut McCloskey sustained to his left eye, Khan did not exhibit the same physical prowess that he showed in his previous fights. His trainer, Freddie Roach, recognized this and Ariza was brought back for Khan’s next fight with Zab Judah – a fight in which Khan regained his former physical strength and explosiveness and completely dominated Judah before stopping him in the 5th round.

If Pacquiao is faithful to his commitment to comply fully with Ariza’s strength and condition regime, then his forthcoming fight with Bradley will be extremely informative about whether his recent disappointments against Mosley and Marquez were the result of his physical decline or as a result of him not training properly for those fights. If Pacquiao can decisively beat Bradley via knockout or an impressive unanimous decision he will provide good evidence that the latter was the case in those two bouts, and if he struggles to an unimpressive points-victory or is even beaten by Bradley then it seems very likely that the former is true, and that Pacquiao has reached the end of his physical prime.



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