By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao looked totally lost out there in the ring on May 2nd in getting beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If Pacquiao was getting sane instructions from his trainer Freddie Roach, it didn’t reflect that in the ring, as Pacquiao looked confused and unsure of himself what to do against Mayweather.
Roach didn’t come unglued even when things were dire for the Filipino star in the later rounds. After a loss like that, the obvious thing for Pacquiao to do is to take a broom and sweep out his entire training team from Roach to his helper assistant Buboy Fernandez, and then start from scratch with a new trainer and an entirely new team. But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen because the 36-year-old Pacquiao says he doesn’t see any issue with his team.
“About my team, I believe there is no problem,” Pacquiao said to DZMM.
Pacquiao’s former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza thinks Pacquiao looked lost in the ring, and he thinks he needs a new and elite team of people to back him up that know how to train a guy in Pacquiao’s class. Ariza didn’t specifically point out which guys in Pacquiao’s team that need to get dumped, but he very likely thinks the entire team needs to be swept out and replaced by new guys.
Pacquiao hasn’t looked that good since Ariza left him, and that obviously was a mistake on Pacquiao’s part to let Roach can Ariza. Pacquiao should have vetoed by move by Roach, and instead kept Ariza. If it’s not broke, why try and fix it. Pacquiao was doing well when he was following Ariza’s strength regimen in the past, but he’s not looked the same without him.
By sticking it out with Roach, Pacquiao is putting himself in a situation where he could take additional losses in the future because he doesn’t seem to have learned anything other than how to use his right hand. Pacquiao needs a good strength coach and a trainer that can come up with alternate plans when he starts floundering in his fights like he did against Mayweather.
Right now, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum is keeping him afloat by matching him against weak opposition from his Top Rank stable like Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios. He’s thrown in an occasional hors d’oeuvre from outside of his Top Rank stable in matching him against the likes of Chris Algieri, but he hadn’t matched Pacquiao tough since his loss to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012. I expect Arum to go back to his formula of matching him against his stable fighters in order to get Pacquiao winning again. It doesn’t matter who trains Pacquiao for that type of opposition because he wins just by athletic talent alone rather than technique or game plan.
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