By Ronnie Nathanielsz
The US promotional tour to further heighten interest in the “Battle of East and West” between Filipino boxing hero Manny Pacquiao and Britain’s Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton has been called off.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports that there would however be a big media conference in Los Angeles in the last week of March after the initial kick-off in Britain. Earlier plans called for promotional tour stops in New York and San Francisco.
Arum said that after the trip to London and Manchester, Pacquiao would return to Los Angeles to start training while Hatton will train for two weeks in England before flying to Las Vegas to continue training under Floyd Mayweather Sr.
Pacquiao is scheduled to leave Manila for Los Angeles on February 24 and Arum said he would join Pacquiao on the trip to London, leaving LA on Friday the 27th. He said “we will arrive in London on Saturday morning and do a tour of London with a camera crew. Then we’ll take a train for Manchester on Sunday for a big press conference after which we will do a London press conference on Monday and on Tuesday morning we will fly back to LA to start his (Pacquiao’s) training.”
Arum predicted that with the styles of Pacquiao and Hatton and the tremendous interest in the showdown at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 2 “this should be a truly great fight.”
Even as Pacquiao’s training camp is set to begin on March 2, Freddie Roach and conditioning expert Alex Ariza have already discussed preparations to get Pacquiao into the very best shape for what is predicted to be a tough fight against IBO light welterweight champion Hatton.
Ariza told us that Roach “talked to me a little bit about Manny’s conditioning program for this fight . He discussed it with me earlier today (Tuesday in LA) and we will get into more details about it once Manny gets here. We will start revisiting the program and make some adjustments.”
Ariza said “we are pretty much laying the groundwork for the preparation and for the running, the sprints and stuff like that for Manny.”
The conditioning expert who has been credited for his contribution to enhancing both the speed and power of Pacquiao as clearly evidenced in his 9th round knockout of WBC lightweight champion David Diaz and his 8th round TKO win over Oscar De La Hoya said Pacquiao “might be in the gym for a few days” before he leaves for London.
