Mayweather vs Pacquiao: Manny discusses shoulder injury, says there's a tear

The report right after Saturday night's Mayweather-Pacquiao fight that Manny Pacquiao had fought with an injured shoulder took off pretty fast, as you'd expect, and Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KO) discussed the injury at his post-fight press conference.

After leading off his comments with, "I did my best, but my best wasn't good enough," the 36-year-old Filipino superstar added, "It's been two weeks we didn't train well. I couldn't use my right hand."

Pacquiao also said he respected the decision of the Nevada State Athletic Commission to allow a numbing injection for the injury, which opened up a two-part argument between promoter Bob Arum and the commission.

"Manny filed the papers with the commission," Arum said. "They were well aware that he had a shoulder injury."

After all fighters were done speaking, the commission's Francisco Aguilar said that Arum's claim was "not accurate at all," and that they didn't find out about the injury until 6:30 pm on Saturday.

As for why they stayed with the fight, trainer Freddie Roach said, "I thought the progress was good enough." Arum said that it's really a pre-existing injury, and that although they'd dealt with it in training camp, it came back to bite Manny on fight night.

"Athletes fight hurt," Arum said. "We felt that the work that was done on the shoulder during training camp would give him the chance to use it. We were disappointed when the injury kicked up again. But this is always the case with sports. A guy is injured in training, deals with it, thinks he's conquered it, and it gets re-injured in the game. It happens in football, it happens in every sport."

Roach said that because of the injury, which Pacquiao said flared up in the third round, Manny was unable to throw his hook like he wanted to, though the jab and uppercut remained weapons.

Pacquiao said that they had an MRI on the shoulder recently, which revealed a tear. Arum compared it to Kobe Bryant's recent shoulder injury, which will keep the aging Lakers star out nine months from his January surgery.