The fallout from Manny Pacquiao’s controversial victory over Juan Manuel Marquez continues to send aftershocks throughout the boxing world. Nowhere are they being felt more, though, than within his very own camp.
We touched on this recently here at Opposing Views, but following Pacquiao’s unimpressive November 12 win, a blame game began to develop within his camp. Some folks blamed others for Pacquiao being undertrained, others blamed their counterparts for him being overtrained. The trainers blamed the advisors for distracting Pacquiao with out-of-ring nonsense, and the advisors blamed the trainers for not getting their golden goose prepared to dominate versus Marquez.
In a recent interview with FightHype, Pacquiao’s notably outspoken conditioning coach Alex Ariza took it to a whole new level. He absolutely scorched the earth with his comments and, in the process, took down the walking, talking epitome of untruth that is Top Rank head honcho Bob Arum.
“I think that's the fight that everybody wants to see. Here's the thing, Dana White is 100% absolutely correct. Bob Arum is a greedy pig. Now I see. That's exactly why Dana White has been so successful and Bob Arum sees him as such a threat, because he puts the fights together that the people want to see. It's about putting the best fights on.”
…
“Arum hates Floyd Mayweather, can't stand him, doesn't want to see him make a dollar, can't stand Golden Boy, doesn't want to do business with them, but instead of doing what's best for the sport, what's best or the fans, and what's best for the fighters because they'll get the payday of a lifetime, no, it's all about him. ‘I don't like him, so f**k him!’ I mean, right or wrong? Unless you can tell me and convince me otherwise, because I'm thoroughly convinced and believe that Floyd really does want to have this fight. I think he really wants to have this fight. As far as he knows, he's right. He's right. Bob is the one interfering and f**king s**t up.”
First off, it’s important to note that Ariza finally appears to be wising up to what we at Opposing Views have been saying for a long, long time. Arum is purposely sabotaging a potential showdown between Pacquiao and his biggest rival for his own personal gains. Everyone sees that at this point.
Two, in that same FightHype interview, Ariza alludes to Arum trying to push himself and trainer Freddie Roach out of the equation. This also makes perfect sense. Roach has long-since been recognized as Pacquiao’s most respected and intelligent confidant. Whereas Arum is strictly concerned with fattening his bottom line regardless of what it does to Pacquiao’s legacy, Roach sees the Filipino champion as a son. He even went so far as to side with Pacquiao against Amir Khan, who he also deeply cares for – that’s how much Manny means to him.
And, finally, it’s important to give due respect to Ariza for having the you-know-whats to come out and blast Arum like this. The reason that the man who proudly lies one day and then lies about telling the truth the next gets away with his nonsense as much as he does, is because nobody is calls him on it. Those days appear to be over.
Maybe Pacquiao’s controversial victory over Marquez was a blessing in disguise, because it’s finally revealing everyone within his stable for who they truly are.
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