By Chris Williams: Angel Heredia, the strength and conditioning coach for Juan Manuel Marquez, believes 34-year-old Manny Pacquiao made a huge mistake by failing to get with his strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza before his last fight with Marquez and following his instructions to build up his body.
Pacquiao was stopped in the 6th round by Marquez and didn’t look strong like he had been years earlier.
Heredia said on his social media site: “I believe if Pacquiao wouldn’t skipped Ariza’s training, he would of performed at a higher scale level, he needs to get to it.”
This is something that Ariza has been complaining about as well, saying that Pacquiao hasn’t been following his full strength and conditioning program since 2009 when he stopped Miguel Cotto in the 12th round. Why Pacquiao chose to stop working out with Ariza is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t quite make sense. If he was having success with it then why did Pacquiao stop and focus on just his boxing training?
One thought is Pacquiao was able to beat the easy guys that his promoter Bob Arum was putting in with him like Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and Shane Mosley that he didn’t really need Ariza’s help.
Pacquiao has lost his last two fights, and even if you want to question his loss to Tim Bradley, the fact is Pacquiao didn’t perform well in that fight, and not even as good as Ruslan Provodnikov. That tells you that Pacquiao needs to train with Ariza once again to build up his strength to get him back to where he was in 2009, if that’s even possible.
It may not matter what Ariza does in terms of building up Pacquiao’s conditioning because if he can’t take a hard shot without falling down like he did twice against Marquez, then the training won’t help him.
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