Former Pacquiao strength coach Ariza now helping out Rios for November tiff

After years being in Manny Pacquiao’s camp, Alex Ariza now finds himself on the opposite side, training Brandon Rios for the biggest fight of his life.

Ariza was fired by Freddie Roach with Pacquiao’s blessing ending a long, and, at times, rough partnership between Roach and Ariza. There have always been cracks in the partnership so the separation is not unexpected. Ariza got into a fight with Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz before the Miguel Cotto fight. Ariza also left Pacquiao’s side as he was preparing to fight Timothy Bradley Jr., flying back to Los Angeles to train Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., but Ariza said he did it with Pacquiao’s blessing.

During that time, Marvin Somodio of Baguio’s Shape-Up Gym stepped in for Ariza. However, Somodio won’t be able to do the same for this camp, as he will be taking care of the day-to-day operations of Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Gym, where he now works full time.

It is not sure yet who will take Ariza’s place in Pacquiao’s camp.

After Pacquiao’s sixth-round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez, Ariza pointed out that science defeated Pacquiao. The strength coach praised the work of Angel Heredia, his counterpart in the Marquez camp, but he stopped short of saying that Pacquiao would have won if the fighter listened to him.

Earlier Tuesday morning, Ariza showed that he still had beef with his former employers as he tweeted against Roach saying that the American trainer couldn’t push his fighters physically anymore which resulted to most of his fighters losing.

Because Freddie physically can't push the fighters anymore and it's caused a 2yr losing streak and It's getting fighters Knock Out!

— Alex Ariza (@ArizaFitness) September 16, 2013

On his Instagram account, Rios had nothing but good words to say about his new conditioning coach, saying in the caption of one of his pictures,  “Alex Ariza know his (expletive) and the workouts are crazy good. So me and Mikey are going to the top. Nov. 9 Mikey will be ready and Nov. 23 I’ll be more then (sic) ready."




Ariza for his part also shared a picture of him training Rios on his Twitter account.

“@Jpconnected: training @Brandon_Rios1 pic.twitter.com/bWjKcMf3aF” Never an Easy day!

— Alex Ariza (@ArizaFitness) September 17, 2013

Pacquiao and Rios are slated to face each other on November 23 at the Venetian Macao for the currently vacant WBO International Welterweight belt. - AMD, GMA News