Brandon Rios looks more than ready to slug it out with Manny Pacquiao roughly five weeks before their welterweight showdown in Macau.
According to his trainer Robert Garcia, the Californian brawler has been a menace in training as he easily knocked out his sparring partners.
"We don't like to publicize what's going on in training, but I'm so impressed," Garcia was quoted by renowned boxing writer Robinson via Manila TImes.
"Brandon's been knocking [his] sparring partners out. He's doing a good job, looking so strong and so fast, and we've still got six weeks before the fight," he added.
The 27-year-old Rios is eyeing the biggest victory of his career when he comes face-to-face with the former pound-for-pound champion next month.
Alex Ariza, who used to work as the strength and conditioning coach for Pacquiao in previous fight, is now working with Rios' camp and his presence could have contributed a lot to the boxer's improved power and stamina.
Garcia admitted that Rios had a hard time losing weight in his previous fights, but the arrival of Ariza's team really helped the former lightweight champion in terms of conditioning.
"I think there's nothing you can take from Brandon. He is resilient, he can take a punch, he has a lot of tremendous qualities. The one thing that was killing him that Robert told me was the weight and how they went about it," Ariza said in an interview with Ring News 24.
"I think it says a lot about an athlete, especially boxers and boxing trainers that go out and they look for that one thing that could possibly change things," he added.
Rios is coming off a 12-round unanimous decision loss to Mike Alvarado in the second chapter of their bloody rivalry last March. Alvarado recently lost his WBO junior Welterweight championship after bowing out to Ruslan Provodnikov in the 10th round of their rumble on Saturday.
Pacquiao and Rios will battle for the WBO Intercontinental welterweight championship on Nov. 23 at the Venetian Macao in Macau, China.
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