Pacquiao to spar Rashidi Ellis and Kenneth Sims Jr at Wildcard Gym

By Boxing News - 02/27/2015 - Comments

pac645By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s sparring partners to get him ready for the Floyd Mayweather Jr fight will be the 5’9” Rashidi Ellis (13-0, 10 KOs) and 5’10” Kenneth Sims Jr (5-0, 2 KOs), according to Rambler.com.

Both fighters have similar fighting styles to Mayweather, but without the defensive skills. Both have fast hands, and you can tell that they’re mimicking his fighting style, but both are a lot easier to hit than Mayweather. Ellis and Sims, both 21, are quite a bit younger than the 36-year-old Pacquiao, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they give him a lot of problems during training camp.

Sims and Ellis will be joining Pacquiao when he flies into Los Angeles next week on Monday, March 2nd to start his training over there. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach will be joining Pacquiao on March 8th after he flies back from Macau, China.

Roach is over there in Macau to assist his fighter Zou Shiming for his title shot against IBF World flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng on March 7th.

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“I’m very impressed with their talent. I know they’re young guys but they’re good. They have that Mayweather look a bit,” Roach said via ESPN.com.

Even if Simms and Ellis do an impeccable job of imitating Mayweather for Pacquiao’s training camp, it’s still going to be extremely difficult for Pacquiao to be able to match-up with him, because Mayweather is so much better than Simms and Ellis in terms of boxing skills, defense, power and ring generalship.

It’s nice that Roach dug up a couple of unbeaten fighters that fight similar to Mayweather, but they’re too far off from Mayweather to give Pacquiao any real boost from sparring them. If anything, the two youngsters might give Pacquiao so many problems during training camp that he’ll go into the fight with Mayweather knowing that he’s up against a guy that he can’t hope to beat.

I don’t think Pacquiao is going to be able to figure out Simms and Ellis and be able to get the better of them on a consistent enough basis for him to get anything meaningful from the sparring sessions. These guys are obviously much better sparring partners than anyone that Pacquiao has had before.

Pacquiao is usually facing slow sluggers to mimic the type of guys that he’s been matched up against in the last six years. Ellis and Simms are the opposite of that. I can see Ellis and Simms really working Pacquiao over the same way Amir Khan did during their sparring sessions.

Roach might be doing Pacquiao no favors at all by hiring Simms and Ellis as his sparring partners because those guys can actually fight.

Simms is a seven-time national amateur champion with blazing fast hand speed. He’s got long arms and he’s got the type of skills that could give Pacquiao fits.

“I think I can imitate everybody if I see them enough because I like boxing, I’m a student of the game. Sometimes when I’m training I just imitate people just to do it,” said Sims via Rappler.com.



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