Manny Pacquiao has to take a chapter from the olden days if he hopes to convincingly beat Juan Manuel Marquez on Dec. 8.
?Manny has to become the Manny of old, the fighter who threw a lot of punches and who didn?t give his opponents the chance to rest and strategize,? said Pacquiao?s buddy, one-time sparring partner and two-time world champion Gerry Pe?alosa.
?If you look at Manny?s old fights, you can see that he was always punching and was busy all the time and these gave his opponents problems,? said Pe?alosa, citing the first round of the first Pacquiao-Marquez fight in 2004 as a prime example where Marquez went down three times.
?If you look at that fight, Pacquiao was always on the go, throwing three, four and five punch combinations, and not one-twos that can easily be read by Marquez.?
Pe?alosa was present when Pacquiao trained exclusively in General Santos City the last three weeks and he was surprised to see how calm and collected Pacquiao was.
?Training in General Santos was better than (training in) Baguio,? said Pe?alosa, noting that there were ?fewer distractions? in General Santos City.
Since late-2009, Pacquiao had set up camp in Baguio for the initial stage of his buildup.
But not this time as Pacquiao swore that training in his hometown turned out to be a beauty, something that Pe?alosa noticed as well.
?Manny was very focused and you could tell he was 100 percent mentally in shape and determined.?
Even Cebu kingmaker Wakee Salud, who also attended many of Pacquiao?s training sessions, noticed a big difference.
?If you?re asking me if he is concentrating, I will definitely tell you that he really is,? said Salud, stressing that, unlike in the Bradley fight where Pacquiao was mentally spent from too much Bible study sessions, ?this time it?s not as unforgiving as before.?
Salud said Pacquiao continues to read the Bible but has allocated more time to training.
Pacquiao arrived in Los Angeles over the weekend and is due to show up for the first day of his preparation at the Wild Card Boxing Club on Monday afternoon (Tuesday morning in Manila).
Wild Card guru Freddie Roach said he will kick off sparring sessions right away as the dynamic duo aim to finally silence Marquez and their critics.
