By Chris Williams: Alex Ariza, the strength and conditioning coach for WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, was less than complimentary of HBO’s 24/7 series. He flat out doesn’t care for it all period, and I can certainly agree with that.

Ariza said on his twitter “24/7 is scripted s***! It’s worse than Jerry Springer. Showtime at least tries to make it real. Manny and I are fine, and he signs my check. They never show Manny training, not once have they been here to track or he’s runs. They just want me to talk about Soap opera BS.”

The stuff that HBO decided to air with this last Pacquiao-Bradley 24/7 episode 2 was really confusing. You had trainer Freddie Roach talking about how he might decide to tell Manny Pacquiao to can Alex Ariza, the strength and conditioning coach for this and that. Who cares? This stuff should have been cut out of the episode, and the same with Pacquiao taking yet again about his religious awakening. It’s not relevant.

If the current Pacquiao-Bradley 24/7 episodes are scripted, then they need to get someone else that’s coming up with this scrip because it’s out of touch with the actual boxing fans that watch the series. The stuff they’re serving up seems to be the type of fluff that you’d have seen in the 50s. It’s corny and lacking in interest. If there were only four or five channels that boxing fans could watch, then I could understand them having these boring episodes but these guys are battling for eyeballs, and they’re doing a lousy job of it in my view.

Ariza continued “They [HBO] make it like that’s happening now; that stuff is so old news…At least they [Showtime] make it real. HBO doing what they do best, standing around doing nothing.”

I’ve seen some really weird stuff from HBO for what they choose to air from the 24/7 series. I almost get the impression that they’re intentionally trying to make it boring sometime because I can’t see how it could come out so boring each time. But what really what it seems to be is that the person doing the directing is choosing to keep the wrong stuff. They’re either taping and throwing away the valuable training stuff in order to have Pacquiao drone on about how religious stuff and bore people on purpose, or they don’t have a clue about what boxing fans really want to see.