By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao has reportedly broken the nose of his Russian sparring partner Ruslan Nogayev during a six round sparring session in Baguio, according to boxing news from Abs-cbnnews.com. The injury cut short the sparring session obviously.
Pacquiao had previously sparred with another Russian sparring partner Ruslan Provodnikov in hopes of getting ready for the June 9th fight against undefeated Timothy Bradley. It’s interesting that trainer Freddie Roach is picking Eastern European fighters as Pacquiao’s sparring partners to get ready for the Western fighter Bradley, because neither of them fight anything like Bradley and it’s pretty much just a waste of time for Pacquiao to be sparring Eastern European fighters with their straight style of fighting when he’s taking on a much different style in Bradley. But I guess Roach has his own ways of doing things. He’s incredibly lucky Pacquiao didn’t get beaten in his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez last November, because Pacquiao looked hopelessly loss out there against him most of the fight before escaping with a questionable 12 round majority decision that few boxing fans agreed with.
Roach is going to have to find another sparring partner to take the place of the injured Russian. Hopefully, he gets wise and picks out and American at least for Pacquiao to spar because Roach could end up messing Pacquiao up big time by putting him in with Russian fighters and then having Pacquiao look clueless against the American Bradley.
Once the fights underway, Roach’s babbling won’t likely help Pacquiao much because it’ll be too late. Roach was talking a mile a minute between rounds last time Pacquiao fought, and it wasn’t helping much. Pacquiao went out and fought the same each round, taking hits over and over again before escaping with his questionable decision.
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