Manny Pacquiao is willing to engage Floyd Mayweather in the middle of the ring if that is what it takes to beat him next month. Pacquiao on Wednesday defended his aggressive style after Mayweather, 38, had called the 36-year-old Filipino a "reckless" fighter whose careless actions could result in knockouts.
Speaking about the welterweight title unification showdown in Las Vegas in May 2, Pacquiao said he had been training harder and with more drive and determination than for any other fight in his career.
"My training and my conditioning is good. I can feel it. I am ready. I am very excited," Pacquiao said at the Wild Card gym in Hollywood.
His hall-of-fame career had surpassed anything he could have imagined when he got into the sport after someone had told him he could earn 100 pesos (about $2) for a fight.
The 12-year-old used the money from that first victory to buy rice for his poverty-stricken family in the Philippines.
The two fighters declined to put a rematch clause in the contract.
"The negotiations for the first one were so hard," Pacquiao said. "How can we talk about a second one? The first one was so hard to make happen."
