By Chris Williams: Alex Ariza, Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach, doesn’t see him being able to learn or change much in his game plan for him to improve much before his fight with 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) on December 8th at the MGM Grand, Grand Garden Arena, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Instead, Ariza sees Pacquiao’s conditioning as being the key to beating Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) this time.

Ariza said to the Manila Standard “Hopefully he recognizes that he has to change some things in his physical conditioning…[Pacquiao and Marquez] “can’t learn very much stylistic-wise…conditioning, strength and executing game plan after getting in shape.”

This sounds good in theory, but I don’t know that it’s going to work for the aging Pacquiao (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) in reality because he’s an old 33 now, and the slow down that we’ve seen in Pacquiao’s game has been there since the Joshua Clottey fight in 2010 and it’s gotten worse with each progressing fight. There’s no way that Pacquiao has been poorly trained in his last five fights. If it was a conditioning thing then it would have been a problem for one fight with his other bouts not having this problem. However, we’ve seen this from Pacquiao consistently since his fight with Clottey and that was over two years ago. I think it’s safe to say that it’s not a conditioning thing with Pacquiao, but rather an age problem for him.

What Ariza should be doing is training Pacquiao to try and circle the ring more to avoid getting in exchanges with Marquez. If Pacquiao can slow the fight down to a crawl, he’ll limit Marquez’s opportunities to land his hard counter shots and make Pacquiao look bad.

With the help of his strength and conditioning coach Angel Heredia, Marquez has really raised his game by developing a lot more upper body strength compared to before without hurting his hand speed or stamina. It’s the perfect union having Marquez work with Heredia, because Marquez is now no longer the weaker fighter in his bouts with Pacquiao and that gives him a big edge. Not only is Marquez the better fighter, but he’s now got the better power and that makes him dangerous for Pacquiao.