By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza says he didn’t see anything from Pacquiao’s performance last Saturday night against Floyd Mayweather Jr. that would indicate that Pacquiao was suffering a right shoulder injury, according to Fighthype.com.
Ariza says he watched the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight over and over again, and he saw no signs of Pacquiao looking injured. Besides that, Ariza saw no ice being applied to Pacquiao’s shoulder or it being massaged the way coaches would do for someone with an injury to their shoulder.
Further, Ariza says that Pacquiao never had a shoulder injury during his six years as his strength and conditioning coach. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum reportedly told ESPN.com that Pacquiao first suffered a shoulder injury in his fight against Oscar De La Hoya in 2008, and has had that problem since then.
“He [Pacquiao] didn’t do nothing during the fight to indicate that he was injured at all,” Ariza said via Fighthype.com. “When I was training Manny for 6 years, we never had a shoulder problem. We’ve watched this fight 10 times and nothing indicates to me that Manny was favoring the shoulder or he wasn’t doing something that looked to me that was impeding his way of fighting.”
The question is if Pacquiao didn’t have a shoulder injury then why was he operated on for a shoulder injury last Wednesday in Los Angeles, California? Pacquiao obviously had an injury to his shoulder because no surgeon is going to operate without there being an injury present. Just how bad of an injury it was is the real question. If it was just a small tear, then it might explain Pacqiao being able to still fight at a high level without showing any signs of injury.
I didn’t see any difference from this version of Pacquiao compared to the one who had beaten Chris Algieri in his previous fight in November 2014. The only difference I saw was that Pacquiao was missing over and over again with his shots instead of landing them, and that was because of Mayweather’s brilliance.
“Arum said Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), 36, has had a partial rotator cuff tear since he fought Oscar De La Hoya in 2008,” Dan Rafael said via ESPN.com.
If Pacquiao has had a shoulder injury since 2012, then how it was that Ariza didn’t know about it? Did Pacquiao not tell Ariza? That seems very strange because over the six years that Ariza was Pacquiao’s strength coach, he stretched Pacquiao countless times. If he had a partially torn rotator cuff during those year, you would think that Pacquiao would wince and tell Ariza to lighten up with the stretching exercises.
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