Manny now 85 percent ready

The stamina is there. And so are agility, speed, strength, power punches.
Conditioning coach Justin Fortune last Saturday said that all the ingredients a fighter must possess to put up a good fight are already with Manny Pacquiao, who, he added, only need to polish them and be ready for the biggest fight of his career against Floyd Mayweather Jr. three weeks from now.
Pacquiao, the World Boxing Organization welterweight titleholder, and the yet to lose Mayweather, who owns the World Boxing Council/World Boxing Association pieces of the 147-pound division belts, will fight each other on May 2 at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas to decide who between them will own the whole pie of the welterweight category.
“Manny’s 85 percent in combative form right now and we still have three weeks or so remaining in the camp which intend to use to point out what he still needs to improve to get him ready to battle,” Fortune said Sunday morning before Pacquiao plunge into his road ritual at the Pan Pacific Park in La Brea District this city.
“He’s fast, very strong and very agile,” he observed. “Any time now, he can be very explosive. And when he explodes, well, somebody better watch out.”
The next three weeks, Fortune added, is the time the coaching staff, headed by chief trainer Freddie Roach, will ease the tension from the 36-year-old eight-division kingpin from rigor of the more than a month training that started in general Santos City before moving here end of February.
“This is the time, actually, when the pains, aches brought about by the tough training regimen he had and still undergoing to make him happy again,” Fortune related.
“He really had a hard time when we transferred his roadwork from the hills of Griffith Park to the bleacher of UCLA oval so we can develop his agility and explosiveness. We succeeded on that and even addressed his recurring leg cramps.”
“Having attained that, we brought him back starting yesterday (Friday) to Griffith because that’s what he, in fact, wanted, he said. “You can just imagine the happiness in his face when we announced our decision last Thursday.”
The UCLA segment of the conditioning routine will continue but for only once a week Wednesday. The rest of the week will be at the flat surface of Pan Pacific Park.
Roach agreed, saying, “Manny loves it there (Griffith) so we brought Griffith back to his roadwork rotation. He likes the mountains because he’s been there from the time we pitched camp there more than a decade ago.”