By Chris Williams: Alex Ariza, the strength and conditioning coach for WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, is excited about Pacquiao being willing to follow his training routines for his next fight against Timothy Bradley on June 9th.

Ariza said this on his twitter “Just left the champ. Excited that he’s ready to get to MY way of training for this fight.”

Oh no, I have a strong feeling that Pacquiao is going to be coming up with a nice set of double leg cramps for the Bradley fight. While I think Ariza brings slight interest to the HBO 24/7 series due to the blunt way he speaks and his tendency to be a little on edge at times, I think all the exercises he puts Pacquiao through during training camp leaves him bloated, over-muscular and prone to leg cramps.

I don’t see any advantage at all of having an extra strength trainer like Ariza. If I was Bob Arum, I’d get with Pacquiao and maybe look to either have Ariza assigned new job on the team or just leg go altogether. If Pacquiao is suffering leg cramps fight after fight, and still looking exhausted late in his bouts, then what does that tell you? I don’t fault trainer Freddie Roach because he’s not the exercise guy. He’s just a guy teaches strategy and oversees the sparring sessions. If Pacquiao is cramping up, then you got to look to eliminate what’s causing it. Since we can’t know for sure, you got to think about dumping Ariza. Maybe dump during this fight as an experiment and if Pacquiao still suffers the leg cramps and fights even worse, then, yeah, bring Ariza back and have continue his exercise regimen.

Personally, I don’t see any advantage of having Ariza putting Pacquiao through all these exercises if he’s still getting cramps and looking like he’s 100 years-old late in his fights. That tells me he’s getting old and needs to be not worked as hard. I used to get leg cramps when I ran track and had some old barnacle of a coach that wanted to run me into the earth doing steep hills and stairs. I would get leg cramps and get them when I was racing 200 meters. I never had them before this old coach took over the helm for one or my coaches that suddenly fell off the wagon and quit or was forced out. So as I was saying, Roach and Arum need to lose Ariza for the Bradley fight. You don’t have to fire the guy. He can hold the pads, carry the bucket or work the door to make sure only the right people get into Roach’s Wildcard gym. If Pacquiao locks up like he’s been doing, then give Ariza his job back maybe. I don’t know. If Pacquiao is going to be cramping up with or without Ariza, then I guess he’s not really needed, eh? Oh well.