Pacquiao has been training for about a month now under the supervision of his boyhood friend and assistant trainer Buboy Fernandez. On Monday, Fernandez was quoted to have said that Pacquiao is now 80 percent conditioned and ready for his Nov. 5 showdown with WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas.
On his own, Fernandez decided to start Pacquiao’s sparring session ahead of the arrival of head trainer Freddie Roach, who is flying in from the U.S. on Tuesday. Fernandez did not say if he consulted Roach on his decision to advance Pacquiao’s sparring session.
Fernandez was joined in the training camp by Fortune about a week ago. Fortune, who was a professional boxer before switching to strength and conditioning coaching, said he was surprised to see Pacquiao move faster and stronger at this early stage of training.
“I’ve been on the job for only a week, but this I can tell you, Manny has improved a lot since we last work together last April for the Timothy Bradley III fight,” Fortune observed. “He’s lot stronger now and faster,” he added.
The Bradley III bout was Pacquiao’s first fight after he had a shoulder operation following his fight against Floyd Mayweather at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada where his previous injury was aggravated by another injury in the fourth round of their historic fight.
Fortune’s observation that Pacquiao is now faster and stronger following the Bradley fight would validate Roach’s claim that Pacquiao lost to Mayweather mainly because of his injury.
Alongside his training for the Vargas fight, Pacquiao has been religiously working on his duties as an elected senator, reporting for work in the morning and banging the heavy bags in the evening in a gym nearby his place of work.