Mayweather shouldn’t fight Pacquiao again if he has the same people around him, says Ariza

By Boxing News - 06/05/2015 - Comments

arizaBy Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza doesn’t see the point in Mayweather facing the 36-year-old Manny Pacquiao a second time if the Filipino fighter hasn’t done anything to overhaul the team that he has working with him.

Ariza thinks that the outcome won’t be any different in a rematch because Pacquiao has the same old tired team around him as before. Ariza thinks that Pacquiao needs to change out his entire team from top to bottom.

It’s obviously not possible for Pacquiao to change out his 83-year-old promoter Bob Arum because he recently re-upped with Arum’s Top Rank promotional organization for two years. Pacquiao’s contract with Arum doesn’t run out until the 2nd of 2016, and who knows if Pacquiao will even be still fighting at that point.

“There is no point in fighting Manny if he has the same people around him,” Ariza said via New Standard/boxingmirror.com. “I would like to see a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight again if Manny revamped his team because after all the talk we and the fight fans expected more.”

Ariza didn’t say if Pacquiao should dump his trainer Freddie Roach, but you’d have to imagine that he’s someone that Ariza feels Pacquiao needs to dump from the start. Roach didn’t have any plan-B for Pacquiao in the Mayweather fight, and a lot of other people felt that way as well. Roach could only tell Pacquiao to put more pressure on Mayweather.

There wasn’t much feedback coming from Roach in the corner, and Pacquiao looked like he was in shock by the 2nd round. Pacquiao didn’t have a clue what to do with Mayweather, and Roach’s advice was pretty useless and empty.

It would be great to see Pacquiao with a different trainer and a different team around him. If he was trained by a well-respected trainer like Robert Garcia or Virgil Hunter, Pacquiao would likely be a much different fighter. I don’t know if Pacquiao would improve enough to defeat Mayweather, but I think he’d at least improve.

The problem with Roach being Pacquiao’s trainer is that they’ve been doing the same old training routines for years, and it’s pretty clear that Pacquiao has gotten the most he can get out of Roach’s advice. For Pacquiao to get to the next level, he’s going to need to have a trainer cover new ground by teaching him stuff that Roach hasn’t gotten to.

“Nobody took responsibility for not having a plan ‘B’ against Mayweather and just kept making one excuse after another,” Ariza said.

Ariza is right about the excuses coming from Pacquiao’s team. We heard the old injury excuse, and then after that we heard from them how Pacquiao should have won the fight, and that was totally laughable.



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