MANNY PACQUIAO completed a final training session on Friday (November 21) ahead of Sundayโs WBO welterweight title fight with Chris Algieri.
Pacquiaoย stretched, loosened up and gradually built up the speed of his shadowboxing as he bounded across the ring. He was fast on his feet, very fast, bursting forward, shifting easily forward and back, all signs of power.
Freddie Roach put on the mitts and strapped the body belt round his waist. Pacquiao worked forward, taking Roach into corners, on to the ropes. He hammered in rapid-fire shots, multiple southpaw rights whipping across before he slammed a wickedly hard back hand into the pad. Even though the weigh-in takes place tomorrow morning, there was an intensity to Pacquiaoโs training here. His fists drummed against the pads and he finished with an attacking burst into the body belt.
A stint on the speedball, his blurring rhythm apparent, and Pacquiao was warming down on the gym floor, still moving, grinning at those around him. He held his arms up as he looked into the mirror and declared happily, โVictory is mine.โ
Pacquiao didnโt seem to be taking it particularly easy. (He ran for 23 minutes, weโre told, in the morning on the treadmill.) Heโs expected to come in beneath the 144lbs catchweight easily.
โManny, heโs really ready, heโs hungry for the first time in a long time,โ his trainer Freddy Roach said. โHe needs a big win right now, he knows that, to make the world come back on his side.
โHeโs really fired up. I like what I see. I donโt talk about it too much with him because I donโt want to bother him about it but I like what I see. Heโs very focused. Heโs very mean on the mitts. Usually when he hits me a good shot, sometimes he knows he hurts me, heโll say sorry and stuff like this. This [camp] he stayed on me, he knocked me down one day on the mitts. For the first time in a long time he had two knockdowns with the sparring partners, which is something I havenโt seen in a while. Everything I see is very good. I like what I see. I think heโs going to bring it out in the fight.โ
Freddie has been working Pacquiao the way they used to train. โManny came up to me and he said weโve been doing the same thing for a long time, the same workouts and so forth and he wanted to go back to the old workouts with more heavy bag, less mitts and more strength work. So I said yes itโs time to change back to that. So we used the heavy bag quite a bit this time. We did five to six to eight rounds a day on the heavy bag, just exploding on it. It helped his strength, heโs punching a lot harder I feel. His punch rate has actually gone up since then also. His punch rate actually had been slipping a little bit in his last couple of fights. So I think that he just wanted to get back to where he was when we were fighting [Lehlo] Ledwaba and those guys a long time ago because I think we were getting a little stale with each other. Weโd been together a long time and it was kind of the same thing over and over again. Always good hard work, but we just wanted to change it up a little bit,โ Freddie said.
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Photo: Chris Farina/Top Rank