Its been difficult to get in touch with strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza because of his hectic scheduled working with undefeated, pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr who has been training harder than ever and sometimes at odd hours, in the buildup to his May 2 showdown with eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao. However, after we saw some video posted by Mayweather in which he was swimming in a pool and throwing a couple of punches in the water with Ariza looking on, we sent Ariza a text message about what we saw and recalled that he had wanted Pacquiao to do the same thing but he didn?t. Luckily Ariza called at around 2:00 a.m. Las Vegas sign and apologize d for not being able to stay in touch as often as he would have wanted to. He said he hadn?t seen the video but declined to put Manny down because of his refusal to go through the swimming routine although he recalled that Pacquiao did swim a couple of times. Problem apparently was that Pacquiao wasn?t a good swimmer. Ariza who worked with Pacquiao when he had an amazing string of victories, overwhelming fighters like David Diaz, Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky ?The Hitman? Hatton, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito said swimming offered Mayweather ?a break after all the other hard stuff we do on his legs? while running, working out in the gym, going through the grueling plyometric regimen and sparring.
He said swimming ?enables him to breathe rhythmically and also helps change things up.? Without seemingly bragging Ariza told the New Standard/boxingmirrior.com that Mayweather was ?doing really well? and that the world will be ?shocked to see his physical attributes? which would make him bigger, stronger and quicker than Pacquiao and confidently predicted fight fans will see ?how dominant Mayweather would be? on May 2. Ariza said aside from former world champions and southpaws Zab Judah and Demarcus ?Chop Chop? Corley he had sparred with, Floyd had also sparred with ?some young, fast and big kids? who included Mexicans and Russians he couldn?t identify.
The well known strength and conditioning coach told us they were not worried about what trainer Freddie Roach had to say about what Pacquiao is going to do on fight night because ?we are training for what we are going to do? on May 2.
