Pacquiao looked soft in loss to Marquez; he needs to work with Ariza

By Boxing News - 12/10/2012 - Comments

Image: Pacquiao looked soft in loss to Marquez; he needs to work with ArizaBy Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao lost to a stronger fighter in Juan Manuel Marquez by a 6th round knockout that shocked the boxing world last Saturday night. Marquez, with his new body that his strength and conditioning coach Angel Hernandez helped build, was able to hurt Pacquiao with nearly every shot and knock him down twice in the fight.

Marquez’s strength advantage was clear to all who saw the fight. Each punch was thrown with more power, and Pacquiao only had his speed to rely and not the muscles that he had in the past.

The problem here is Pacquiao didn’t work with Alex Ariza for this fight. Ariza is Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach, and he’s the one that helped build up a lot of Pacquiao’s strength to enable him to fight at welterweight and mix it up with the bigger fighters. But for some reason Pacquiao stopped working out with Ariza like he had in the past and we’ve seen how Pacquiao hasn’t been as dominating since he stopped working with Ariza.

That’s a mistake because Pacquiao isn’t a natural welterweight and he needed to be working on his strength to be able to compete with these guys because some of them are very strong and melt down from above 150 to fight Pacquiao. That wasn’t the case last Saturday night in Pacquiao’s loss to Marquez, but Pacquiao still should have been working with Ariza for this fight.

Marquez has worked hard for a year now with Hernandez and his body is much stronger and he’s not his speed in the process. Marquez improved with the help of his strength coach. Pacquiao should have been working out with Ariza just to keep up with Marquez. That was a big mistake. If you know you’re fighting a guy that’s building his body to look for a knockout like Marquez was, Pacquiao should have been focusing on doing the same thing because looked weak out there against Marquez. His body looked soft in comparison to Marquez.

Maybe this loss for Pacquiao will make him understand that he needs to be working out with Ariza to get his old strength back because he was at his best when he had Ariza working with him. Just look at how powerful and fast Pacquiao was for his win over Miguel Cotto. He was so much better than and so much stronger. Last night, Pacquiao looked frail compared to Marquez.



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