"I mean, he's muscular and everything, but he hasn't knocked anybody out in his division or especially in the 147-pound division. He's not even thought of as a puncher at 140, so how is he going to be thought of as a puncher at 147...The thing is, how do you get motivated for Bradley? The guys we're sparring in the gym are better than Bradley. I really don't know. That's one for Freddie I guess. I mean, Freddie and I were talking when we were in San Antonio. It's like, dude, you don't want to fight Amir Khan, but you want to fight Manny," stated Strength & Conditioning coach Alex Ariza, who talked about Manny Pacquiao's upcoming clash with Timothy Bradley, Amir Khan's rematch with Lamont Peterson, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.'s recent victory, and much more. Check it out!
BT: Well, although Manny hasn't signed the contract yet, I guess it's looking like Bradley on June 9th. What are your thoughts on that fight?
AA: You know, to be honest with you Ben, I don't really think one way or the other about Bradley once I saw how he did with Amir. You know, I had a lot of respect for him the way he showed up after the Judah fight, you know, went to the press conference and said we're going to fight, and this, that, and the other, and then he backed out completely. And then when Amir saw him in Vegas at the other fight, he [Amir] called him and told him he needs to grow some balls, and he just turned away and walked away from Amir. I mean, if he's afraid of Amir, I don't know what to expect as far as what he's thinking fighting Manny.
BT: Is that kind of odd knowing that Manny is about to fight Bradley now after you guys tried for so long to get him in the ring with Amir.
AA: Well, he's the one who wanted to fight Amir. You know Amir, he'll fight anybody. Whoever's there, he fights. That was his cause; he backed out, he didn't want to fight. I was there when Amir told him right to his face, "You need to grow some balls," and he just turned away and walked away from him. He's obviously just there to get paid. He's not there to win, for sure, because if you're afraid to fight Amir, I can't imagine wanting to fight Manny. It's not anything that I'm saying; you can just read it how the public feels about this fight. I mean, that says it all. Nobody's calling for it, nobody's screaming for it, despite what Bob say, so whatever.
BT: Bradley doesn't exactly have his own following, so I'm really not sure what angle Bob is going to use to promote this one. I guess they can promote it as Manny's last fight.
AA: I'll tell you how you promote it. You put Chavez on the week before. You know Chavez is the biggest thing in boxing right now. You put him on the week before to promote Manny's fight; that's how you promote it.
BT: Is that when Chavez is officially fighting again, the week before Manny?
AA: I have no idea, to be honest, but I mean, my guess would be that since this kind of fight is kind of hard to promote to begin with, you know, why not put on the guys who bring in the biggest ratings right now as far as TV boxing, just regular [HBO World] Championship boxing, and that's Chavez Jr. There were 15,000 people in the Alamadome. That's a lot of people.
BT: True, true. Recently, Bradley did an interview where he said he's the bigger guy and he expects to be more powerful than Manny. Do you view him as being naturally bigger than Manny?
AA: No, of course not. I mean, he's muscular and everything, but he hasn't knocked anybody out in his division or especially in the 147-pound division. He's not even thought of as a puncher at 140, so how is he going to be thought of as a puncher at 147? For me, I think the hardest thing was when the idea of Manny fighting Cotto was out there, I got a call from Manny talking about, "What are we going to do? How are we going to change everything? Come out here a month early, let's start focusing on my strenght and conditioning again." You know, it was all about that talk when he was going to fight Cotto. But that's Cotto. The thing is, how do you get motivated for Bradley? The guys we're sparring in the gym are better than Bradley. I really don't know. That's one for Freddie I guess. I mean, Freddie and I were talking when we were in San Antonio. It's like, dude, you don't want to fight Amir Khan, but you want to fight Manny?
BT: (Laughing) Of course he does. That's the bigger payday.
AA: Of course. I mean, is he going to go in there to win? I don't know. I mean, come on, he had trouble with Casamayor.
BT: Did you guys see any of that fight?
AA: Yeah, we watched it in the locker room. Casamayor is like a Dominican baseball player; they come over here, they say they're 19, then they're really 26. (Laughing) You know what I mean?
BT: (Laughing) Damn. So Casamayor said he was 40, but he's really 60?
AA: Yeah, he's probably 65. (Laughing) Who knows? But come on.
BT: When I see Bradley talking about being bigger and stronger, it's hard for me to buy into it just because we've heard so many of Manny's opponents say the same thing time and time again.
AA: It's not for you to believe, bro. It's for him to try to promote and try to draw interest in it. Anybody who's any kind of a boxing fan knows better. I mean, you can't even get a serious answer out of Freddie if you ask him a question, you know? (Laughing) He just shakes his head, adjusts his glasses, and tries to think about how he's gonna try to make interest in this fight. It's just going to be really hard to motivate Manny for something like this.
BT: Well, before you start getting Manny ready for Bradley, you're going to have to get Khan ready for the rematch with Peterson. Is there anything you plan on doing differently this time around?
AA: I think so. On my end, I will be, for sure. I mean, with what I do, there's only a few things you can tweak one way or the other, you know? It's just such a fine line with these guys that are growing. Even Julio, there's such a fine line.
BT: I know there were a lot of critics wondering about Chavez's weight prior to weighing in for the Rubio fight. Is it getting tough to make the cut to 160 or did some of the distractions during camp play a part in that?
AA: I myself got caught up in the whole hype about Rubio being so big and so strong that I tried to build the biggest, strongest Chavez Jr. that could possibly fit onto a 160-pound frame, and it almost backfired on me. Again, it's just so hard. With somebody like Chavez, it's just going to take me a little bit more time to know his body a little bit better and just make the adjustments a little quicker than I made them, but I think the Chavez fight came out relatively well for us. With all the distractions that were going on during the camp, and even the week of the camp, with Bob sticking his beak in our business trying to get me fired again, with all that shit going, I still think you probably saw 60-70% of what really Chavez is capable of doing.
BT: So you don't think Chavez is going to have any problems making 160 in the future?
AA: Really, it was just a matter of the logistics of everything. Usually, the hotel has all the things I need, especially for the day before and day of the weigh-in. We had to drive an hour out of our way to get to a pool, where he likes to move around and swim. When we were in Houston when he fought Manfredo, you know, he woke up at 162 and I wasn't even worried about it because I knew we were going to go downstairs, he was going to swim around, shadow box in the water a little bit, move around, and we weighed in at 159 3/4. So we woke up at 160.2 [for the Rubio fight], but our scale was off by a pound, so before you knew it, we found ourselves a pound over. Instead of just going down to the regular health club, which was only 5 minutes away, their pool was closed, shut down, and we had to drive an hour away. So that put us underneath the gun and I don't like to start pushing guys to start sweating right away and start moving; there was no need for it. So it just took us a little longer than we had expected. Mentally, obviously panic set in because we weren't going to make it on time. Chavez panicked a little bit, but after cooler heads kind of came to it, we just said, "You know what? We're in no hurry. Let's just sit here and we'll move around until we get to where we need to be." And he still showed up at 159 1/2.
BT: Well despite the early criticism, it didn't look like he was affected at all during the fight. He never looked tired and he was still trading all the way to the end of the fight.
AA: You know, here's the thing I've come to learn about the press and these guys. Nobody likes to talk about good news. They only want to talk about bad news. So it doesn't matter what I do or how I do it. If a fighter looks like shit, then I'm not as good as I say, I don't know what I'm doing, or this, that, and the other. If a fighter comes out and fights like Julio did, then it's he's on steroids and he skipped out on his piss test and all of this. Any way you look at it, it's a lose-lose for me. You're not going to get these guys to say anything nice about me. But Chavez, we know we don't have problems making 160. When I say we don't have problems, I mean, nobody is carrying Chavez underneath the arms to the weigh-in. We haven't completely depleted him. Guys this size are always going to have some degree...it's not going to be a cake walk, you know? It never is going to be a cake walk when you're coming in there. Make no mistake, I'm bringing him in on purpose at 181, 182, 183 pounds at fight night. There's a reason for that, because when he was done fighting Rubio that night, he went right back down to 172, so he lost 10-12 pounds of water that night.
BT: I'm glad you mentioned that because I think sometimes, people hear those numbers, but don't really understand what it means to rehydrate after cutting to make weight, or hyperhydrating to prepare for a long fight.
AA: The sweat is coming right out during the fight, so there's a reason I bring him in that big, because I know, in case these things turn into a long war, he's properly hydrated and he's built to go the distance. I mean, he's a train; the idea was to be that, to be a train, and just go forward, go forward, go forward, go forward, and that's what he did. We knew from the beginning that this was going to be a fight of strength and conditioning. I can assure you, the next time we fight, Chavez will come in at 159 3/4, 159 1/2, and he'll be 183 pounds the next night. It's not by mistake. We don't do things like that. Everything is planned. They say, "Well, he's only going to be here [160 pounds] a little longer." Why would I move him up? He's a 160-pound fighter who makes 160 pounds with relatively no problems and he goes all the way up to 180. Why would I want to move him up to 168? This is everyone's game plan when they fight Julio, "He's not in tip-top condition, he's gonna fade, and that's when we're going to get him." That was Rubio's game plan. He said it himself, "I don't believe he's in tip-top shape." That's pretty fucking sad because with getting sick, and getting a DUI during camp, and not taking camp serious, he still beat your ass like that? Then God only knows what damage he'll do when he's in tip-top shape and 100%.
BE SURE TO ALSO CHECK OUT PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW WITH ALEXA ARIZA
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