In a recent interview, WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao revealed that he took his last opponent, Juan Manuel Marquez, too lightly, making the fight much more difficult than it needed to be. "I underestimated him," the 8-division world champion explained. "I thought he was small, and that I would have no problems. It was a mistake. I shouldn't have underestimated him." It's a mistake that he doesn't plan on repeating on June 9th when he steps into the ring with undefeated WBO jr. welterweight champion Timothy Bradley.
"Timothy Bradley is a strong fighter and he loves to fight toe-to-toe and he's undefeated, and I think it's going to be a lot of boxing in the ring," Pacquiao noted earlier this week as he assessed the strengths of his new opponent. "So what we're going to do is we're going to train hard. We're going to do at least 10 weeks of training for this fight and I hope the same thing with Timothy Bradley, who will train hard for this fight, so we can give a good fight and we can entertain people."
Of course, Pacquiao also began training camp early for the Marquez fight as well. In fact, it was roughly 11 weeks of training for that fight. That being said, the atmosphere wasn't quite as serious and intense as it's been in past camps. HBO's 24/7 cameras often times captured him laughing and joking around in the gym, perhaps spending more time entertaining himself with sparring sessions between members of Team Pacquiao than focusing on the task at hand.
Nevertheless, this time, Pacquiao insists that training camp will be different, and judging from the excitement of his Strength & Conditioning coach, Alex Ariza, it certainly will be much more intense. "Just left the Champ...Excited that he's ready to get to My way of training for this fight," Ariza would post on his official Twitter page. "Mannys said this fight, he's wants to go back to focusing on building power and speed like we did before. I LIKE IT!!!"