Pacquiao starts training with Buboy Fernandez

By Boxing News - 02/23/2015 - Comments

buboy44By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao has started training with assistant trainer Buboy Fernandez in the Philippines to get a jump on his training camp for his May 2nd fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Pacquiao was hoping to start training with his long-time trainer Freddie Roach at the Wildcard Gym in Los Angeles, California, but Roach is with Zou Shiming in Macau, China as part of Shiming’s title fight against 35-year-old IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng. Roach sure picked a poor time to be elsewhere when Pacquiao needs him most.

Roach will be tied up with that fight until March 8th, at which point he’ll be coming back to the United States to begin training Pacquiao for the Mayweather fight. Until then, Pacquiao will need to depend on his trusty assistant trainer Buboy Fernandez to put him through his paces to get him ready as best as possible for the Mayweather fight.

“I would have wanted to start preparations early and right at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles owing to the tough fight I am facing, but since Freddie is still in Macau, I’ll start building up here,” Pacquiao told Philboxing.com. “We have to see to it that when we arrive in L.A., I’m strong enough to endure the tougher regimen prepared by Freddie.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGVwCpvvWes

You can’t expect Buboy to be the strategy guy for Pacquiao to come up with a fool proof game plan to beat the 38-year-old Mayweather. That job will be Roach’s, and even he will likely be out of his element in trying to come up with anything that will be good enough to bring a victory for the 36-year-old Pacquiao.

We already know that Roach’s idea in the past for Pacquiao to beat Mayweather was to have him simply put a lot of pressure on him and throw a lot of punches. In other words, Roach’s plan was to have Pacquiao fight like he always does and hope that Mayweather chose to stand with his feet in quick-drying cement for 12 rounds so that the plan would work out. It’s unclear whether Roach ever had a plan B in the past.

My guess is his only plan was the constant pressure plan, and I think that’s still the main plan, even though Roach has recently said that he won’t be using that plan for this fight.

I don’t think Roach has anything else he can think up to help Pacquiao beat Mayweather, and even if Roach could, I don’t think Pacquiao can fight any other way than how he always fights. Pacquiao’s pretty much stuck with the one style he always uses and that’s for him to pressure his opponents constantly and hope that they’re foolish enough to stand still so that he can have his way with them.

“I’m excited, of course,” Pacquiao said. “Finally this fight will happen, and all I’m sure boxing fans are also excited with the thoughts that what they have been waiting for a long time would soon be realized.

To be sure, boxing fans have been waiting for the fight since 2009, but it could have been made back then had Pacquiao agreed to the full random blood testing that Mayweather wanted for the fight.



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