The fight of the century is set to take place in about a month a half and Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s camp believes they've got a secret weapon that will give then an advantage over Manny Pacquiao.
Earlier it was reported by CBSSports.com that the 38-year-old was going old-school by taking an axe and chopping wood to train for the upcoming blockbuster fight.
According to MLive, Jeff Mayweather, Floyd's uncle, believes that the champion boxer has benefited from the addition of Alex Ariza as a strengthening coach. Ariza used to be in Pacquiao's team until he began to bump heads with Pacquiao' head coach Freddie Roach.
Ariza has been introducing a new program consisting of weights and bands that has never been done by Mayweather before. He believes that subtle changes are happening "but it's a major difference for Floyd because he's never done it," said Jeff Mayweather.
"Floyd's a beast," he revealed. "The only thing I can attribute it to is his own strength, in his mind, and having a real strength trainer for the first time. Originally, I think Floyd got him (Ariza) just to mess with Manny's mind. But he knows Manny's history and his flaws and everything else."
Per Boxing News 24, Ariza is the man behind the success of Pacquiao as he moved up to higher weight classes.
"Ariza is the genius and architect behind turning Pacquiao into a knockout artist in moving him up in weight from the lighter weight classes. Under Ariza's guidance, Pacquiao was knocking pretty much everyone out that he was facing. This was during a time that Ariza had Pacquiao working hard on his resistance exercises to help develop his muscle power, and put weight on him. However, after Pacquiao stopped working on the strength and conditioning like he'd been doing earlier with Ariza, the knockouts completely dried up."
The site noted that with Mayweather increasing in age, more emphasis must be placed on his conditioning and power.
According to Roy Jones Jr. who spoke to CBSSports, the power and conditioning training may work to the advantage of the undefeated boxer.
"Pacquiao may think he'll be able to outwork him and not worry about (Mayweather's) power because he hasn't had to use it," Jones said. "Now that he's gotten older he will use his power, and that's going to be a bigger problem for Pacquiao. Because, to me, the only way for him to beat Pacquiao is to get him out of there."
Ariza was a former employee of Pacquiao hired in 2008 but was fired in 2013.
Mayweather (47-0, 26 KOs) is an 11-time world champion, and Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs), a eight-division world champion, will face off in a welterweight world unification match at Las Vegas' MGM Grand on May 2.
