By Raj Parmar: Unbeaten pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza is feeling extremely confident that Manny Pacquiao is in for a surprise come May 2. Ariza was Manny’s conditioning coach for a number of years before being let go and has now landed in Floyd’s camp.
This will be Mayweather’s first fight with Ariza being part of his training regimen and Alex is confident that Floyd’s punching power will be the difference in the fight.
“Once Manny tastes his (Floyd’s) power, we’ll see who is going to run,” Ariza said to examiner.com, “If Floyd sees the opportunity, I think he will finish him off.”
This does support the widely accepted view that Floyd is focusing on his punching power a bit more in this training camp than in the past. Mayweather usually always has a significant speed advantage over his opponents however in this instance he will not enjoy this benefit as Pacquiao may be equally fast as (if not faster than) Floyd. This fact may be leading the Mayweather camp to focus on his punch a little more as he simply cannot rely just on hand speed this time around to win the fight.
Alex was a central part of Manny’s dominant run through the lightweight to welterweight divisions and was widely credited as helping to turn Manny into fearsome puncher. After Ariza was fired by Manny’s head trainer Freddie Roach after the “Pacman” fell to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012, many observers feel Manny lacked the same explosiveness during his follow-up wins over Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley.
In his last fight however Manny showed some of his prior form by dominating and knocking down Chris Algieri six times, and is certainly feeling momentum as he heads into the Mayweather fight. It is no secret that Manny will be looking to try to do the same to Mayweather however Floyd will try to dissuade Pacquiao from being too aggressive by letting him know early on in the fight that he has the ability to hurt him and the strength to prevent Pacquiao from smothering him with punches.
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