By Allan Fox: Dashon Johnson, one of the sparring partners that helped Manny Pacquiao prepare for his May 2nd mega-clash against Floyd Mayweather Jr., has confirmed that Pacquiao suffered a shoulder injury during training camp for the Mayweather camp.
Johnson says that the sparring partners were then sent home early. As it turns out, Pacquiao’s injured shoulder failed to heal completely by the time he faced Mayweather last Saturday night, and this kept Pacquiao from fighting at 100%.
Pacquiao told the media that he estimated that he was at “60%” for the Mayweather fight.
“We were asked not to mention anything to anyone, but yes, Manny got hurt during this camp and his right shoulder and it was messed up pretty bad,” Johnson said via Philstar.com.
The injury has some boxing fans and writers wondering why Pacquiao didn’t postpone the fight. With the money that fans paid out for the fight it might have been better for Pacquiao to have rested the injury, or done whatever to have the problem fixed before he went ahead to face Mayweather. If the shoulder injury is the reason why Pacquiao fought so poorly last Saturday night then he did himself and the fans a disservice by taking the fight.
Pacquiao says that he fought pretty much using just one arm because he couldn’t generate the kind of power that he needed to for his right arm after he aggravated the injury early in the fight while throwing a flurry of punches at Mayweather when he was against the ropes.
“So bad his sparring partners including myself were asked to go home a few weeks out before the actual fight, which means a lot of work that could have put in for this fight was brought to a halt due to the fact that he could not spar really anymore and didn’t want to mess up more than he already had,” Johnson said.
It sounds like Pacquiao didn’t have much of a training camp. His trainer Freddie Roach may have given a hint of there being a problem when he said that he was working on having Pacquiao use just his left hand instead of his right. It didn’t make sense on the surface because Pacquiao is a left handed fighter, and it was in the middle point of his career that Roach finally was able to help him develop his right hand. But for Roach all of a sudden to say that Pacquiao was just using his left hand because he wanted to develop it into a weapon was a big hint that there was a problem with Pacquiao’s right. It looks like Roach said this so that people wouldn’t start wondering why Pacquiao wasn’t using his right hand.
“Manny no matter what, wasn’t going to let his family, fans and friends down by postponing the fight so he was going to fight through the pain,” Johnson said.
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