Pacquiao suffers ankle injury in basketball game

By Boxing News - 08/27/2013 - Comments

pac5611By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) has reportedly suffered an ankle injury during a basketball game, according to Philboxing.com. As of now, the injury is being called a sprain, but it’s still unknown yet what the extent of the injury. Pacquiao likes to play a lot of basketball games all year round, even during training camp.

The injury won’t keep Pacquiao from playing basketball once it heals. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has said in the past that he doesn’t like him to be playing basketball during training camp, but he’s not give him too much resistance on trying to stop this.

If it is just a sprained ankle without any tears of the ligaments, then Pacquiao should be able to return to his basketball games. Pacquiao has a fight scheduled on November 23rd against Brandon Rios at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.

This kind of thing where Pacquiao is putting a lot of energy into non-boxing related activities has led to him being criticized a lot for having himself spread out doing things that aren’t helping him with his boxing career.

Basketball might be good for helping Pacquiao’s stamina, but he would be better off in jogging on a treadmill, and using more of his time studying tape of his opponent Brandon Rios to find weaknesses in his game.

Pacquiao is coming off of a 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez from last December. Pacquiao also lost his fight before that against Tim Bradley. You can also make a strong case that Pacquiao lose his fight before that against Marquez. We’re talking three straight losses here, and it’s getting kind of dire for Pacquiao.

Pacquiao playing basketball at this stage in his career is kind of like Nero fiddling as Rome burned. I think Pacquiao’s priorities are a little misplaced. He should be trying to get dialed in to try and stop his losing streak, because if he gets knocked cold by Rios, it could be increasingly difficult for his promoter Bob Arum to sell his fights to the U.S audiences on pay per view.



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