Pacquiao said to philboxing.com “I am ready.”
Pacquiao is finishing up sparing and his strength trainer Alex Ariza noticed the drive in him, saying he ‘Just keeps pushing and pushing and pushing. That’s Manny Pacquiao.”
Hopefully, Pacquiao isn’t working himself to the bone for this fight because he is after all an aging fighter who is coming off of one of his worst fights since 2008 in a questionable 12 round decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez. The 2008 fight just happens to be the previous bout that Pacquiao had against Marquez, and like the recent fight, Pacquiao’s win over Marquez was highly questionable. I had Marquez winning both fights..
Ariza feels that he has to slow Pacquiaos work in the gym to make sure he doesn’t leave his best before the fight. Ariza said “[Pacquiao] is right now at his peak, but we’ve got to slow him down.”
Ariza and trainer Freddie Roach thought that Pacquiao was in the best shape of his life in the recent Marquez fight, but then Pacquiao came out and looked flat. After the fight, there was then a lot of excuses made about Pacquiao having problems. So it’s hard to say whether it means much when you have Roach and Ariza talking about how great Pacquiao looks because if he looks poor against Bradley, we may hear how something took away Pacquiao’s concentration. In other words, we’ll be hearing excuses.