Arum says Pacquiao has had shoulder injury since 2008

By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum says that Manny Pacquiao’s recent right shoulder problem isn’t a new injury that just surfaced for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight last Saturday night. The 83-year-old Arum claims that Pacquiao has had the injury to his right rotator cuff since his fight against Oscar De La Hoya seven long years ago in 2008.

Why Arum and Pacquiao chose this time for them to bring up the injury is unknown? You would think that Pacquiao and Arum could have mentioned the injury ages ago after a high point in Pacquiao’s career rather than after a loss.

Surprisingly, Pacquiao has been fighting with the same injury for all these years, beating the likes of Miguel Cotto, Ricky Hatton, Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley.

The question is how did Pacquiao beat all those guys with a bad rotator cuff injury? Only Arum and Pacquiao know for sure because many fighters would be on the shelf if they had a rotator cuff injury that they were dealing with.

“[This is because] he rested it for a couple of months and it went away,” Arum said about Pacquiao’s injured right rotator cuff to ESPN’s Dan Rafael. “It’s a recurring kind of injury. It can kick up again, which it did in sparring. The doctor said this was the time for him to no longer have to live with that, to repair it and it will be as good as new,” Arum said.

Pacquiao had successful surgery this week on Thursday on his injured right rotator cuff at the Kerlan Jobe Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. The problem now presumably is a thing of the past unless it doesn’t heal properly, or if Pacquiao reinjures it during training.

Arum says that Pacquiao wasn’t having any problems with his shoulder until recently in the training camp for the Mayweather fight.

“They gave him [Pacquiao] a series of treatments that enabled the pain to go away and then when he went into the fight, he was feeling absolutely no pain and using his right arm,” Arum. “It was really sometime in the fourth that he reinjured it.”
I don’t know what Arum and trainer Freddie Roach were thinking about in believing that Pacquao’s shoulder would be okay for the Mayweather fight. As far as I know, you don’t recover from a shoulder injury where you have a bad tear in your rotator cuff by just resting it.