By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach dumped all over Manny Pacquiao’s former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza in an interview with Radio Raheem this week. Roach said that Ariza would give Pacquiao drinks before workouts and he wasn’t sure what was inside the drinks. Roach said he didn’t trust Ariza at all, and he asked him about what was inside the drinks but Ariza wouldn’t tell him.
“One of the reasons I don’t work with him [Ariza] anymore is he’s a little shady,” Roach said to Radio Raheem. “He used to give Manny a drink before workouts, and I asked him what was in the drink and he would never tell me. I told him I need to know what was in the drinks because you’re giving it to my fighter. And if something goes wrong, I’m going to get the blame. So in my opinion, he’s a little shady. So he’s in that champ [Brandon Rios] now and it doesn’t surprise me that [Rios testing positive for a banned substance] happened.”
It would be really interesting to know when Pacquiao was getting these drinks before his workouts from Ariza. What year and before what fights. I’m not sure if Roach is aware that by talking about Ariza like this in terms of him giving Pacquiao drinks, it’s going to have some people pointing fingers at Pacquiao. You have to wonder whether Roach worked this out in his head before he started opening his mouth on the subject of him being suspicious about the drinks Ariza was giving Pacquiao. Naturally, boxing fans are going to want to know when Ariza was giving Pacquiao the drinks and before what fights. They’ll want to know when Ariza stopped giving Pacquiao the drinks, because people will naturally be suspicious about this kind of thing.
If Roach wasn’t getting an answer from Ariza about what he was giving Pacquiao in those drinks, then Roach shouldn’t have allowed him to give them to him. After all, it’s his fighter and he was in charge of the situation. If you have someone that’s not giving you answer about what’s inside of a drink that’s being given to one of your fighters, then you’ve got to let that person go. It’s kind of surprising that Roach didn’t pull the plug on Ariza as the strength trainer for Pacquiao if he had suspicions about the drinks that he was giving to him and not getting answers about the contents of those drinks.
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