MANILA -- Despite feeling jet lagged after arriving from the Philippines a few days ago, Manny 'Pacman' Pacquiao had a two-and-a-half hour workout during his first day of training at the Wildcard Boxing Club in Los Angeles, California, which ended with coach Freddie Roach's mitt flying off his hand.
"We have to continue our hard training kahit nandito sa America. We have two more weeks of hard training," said Pacquiao, who will have his toughest fight to date against Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto.
Roach said he is very much pleased by his protégé's first day of workout in the US.
"He's punching harder. He's really grown into the weight. He's punching really good. He has knockout power in both hands,” said the Hall-of-Famer boxing coach.
Roach said the typhoons that hit their training camp in Baguio City had no negative effect on their preparations.
“People think that with the typhoon, we had some problems but we worked right through it. We worked as usual. It didn't slow us down a bit," he said.
With uplifting the spirit of the typhoon victims adding extra motivation for Pacquiao, and a month of serious training in Baguio, Roach thinks his ward could knock Cotto out.
"He knows how to make them happy again and that's him winning the fight, so he's going to work even harder. This actually works in our favor," said Roach.
Pacquiao's new found strength and bigger stature should be attributed to strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza
Ariza said most boxers moving up in weight would have lost their speed if they added power, or vice versa, but not Pacquiao.
"It's usually a Catch-22: when you move up in weight, you have to sacrifice something… but with Manny, luckily, we put a gambit of different things together and it's all working out," said Ariza.