By Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach says he’s happy to hear that his former strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza is working out with WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr, but Roach wonders how long it’ll be before Ariza gets fired from his job.
It’s still officially confirmed whether Ariza is actually working with Mayweather. It could be that they had one workout and that was it.
“It’s unusual that they hired him [Ariza], but maybe they want to get some information on how he [Maidana] fights,” Roach said to Radio Raheem. “In my opinion, he knows absolutely nothing about the fight game, but they can have him so I’m happy. But how long before he gets fired again? We’ll see. He has a track record that’s not so good.”
Roach fired Ariza last year from working with Pacquiao after he helped him gain weight and bulk up to win titles at welterweight and junior middleweight. Ariza would later work with Marcos Maidana, Brandon Rios and Mikey Garcia at Robert Garcia’s Oxnard Gym. Ariza appeared to do a good job of building size for those fighters. But Garcia recently let Ariza go as well.
Ariza can help Mayweather with his conditioning program with the little time left that he has before the fight.
Some boxing fans felt that Roach didn’t like the idea of Ariza encroaching into his territory by helping out in the corner. In looking at it from the outside, it look like Ariza was just trying to help out. But Roach didn’t like it and he eventually pulled the plug with Ariza working with Pacquiao after checking it out with Pacquiao first.
Strength and conditioning coaches are just like trainers. They come and go. Roach has been dumped by fighters himself, so it’s not as if it’s just Ariza who’s losing his job. Amir Khan and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr both stopped working with Roach. I’m sure there’s a lot more than just those two who decided they wanted to look elsewhere for a trainer.
Comments are closed.