By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum isn’t impressed with what he sees of his number #1 fighter Manny Pacquiao after traveling to the Philippines and watching how listless Pacquiao looked during his training session. After briefly trying to put a positive spin on it, Arum came out with this today in an article at Philstar.com: “What I watched Manny on Saturday, I didn’t see the kind of speed that he would need to beat Margarito. If the fight happened on Saturday Margarito would win the fight.” I totally agree with Arum.
I’ve seen some of the video of Pacquiao’s training and sparring sessions and he looks like a little slow tank moving around the ring landing but getting hit a lot in return by his sparring partners. Pacquiao looks really slow and heavy at this weight and I don’t see the advantage for him. He was much better fighting at a lighter weight, but he looks slow now that he’s almost 150. I think whatever advantage Pacquiao had in the past over his opponents, it’s now gone that he’s beefed up through his six meals a day.
If I was his trainer Freddie Roach, I’d back off immediately with the meals and get him on the track with Alex Ariza and work on trimming off some of that useless muscle that seems to be slowing him down. Pacquiao could probably beat Margarito weighing only 140 or less. He doesn’t need all the extra weight. I think that is a bad idea for him. Pacquiao looks utterly hittable at this weight. We already saw how easy it is to hit Pacquiao in his last fight against Joshua Clottey. If Clottey had the sense enough to realize that he could win the fight if he had thrown a few more punches, he would have beaten Pacquiao to a pulp.
Instead, Clottey only threw a few punches every round and looked to be conserving his energy. Margarito won’t be fighting like that. He’s going to be fighting all out throwing 100 punches per round. Pacquiao, the way he looks like right now, can’t match that rate, at least he can’t match it with any kind of power. He looks too heavy and it’s going to be easy for Margarito to find him with his punches.
Arum says “It’s not my place to stand in between the trainer and the fighter. But he’s got to focus and stop all these nonsense. But if Freddie [Roach] needs my help, I’d be happy to do it.” Oh boy, that’s a shot across the bow. Roach is dropping the ball big time with his training for Pacquiao this time. If it was his idea for Pacquiao to beef up even further for this fight, I think he’s made a fatal miscalculation. Pacquiao looks like he can’t even move. He’s no longer jumping around because he’s too heavy. Pacquiao looks like a plodder. At this point, I think even Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander, Marcos Maidana and Amir Khan could beat Pacquiao.
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