Buboy: Someone will go down in Pacquiao-Matthysse

With Manny Pacquiao’s close friend Buboy Fernandez now functioning in the lead trainer role for this weekend’s fight against Lucas Matthysse, there’s a lot of speculation about what kind of condition Pacquiao will enter this fight in.

Pacquiao hasn’t been without trainer Freddie Roach since he hit U.S. soil and the pair had a tremendous run over the years. But all good things come to an end, and this is no different. So with Buboy now controlling Pac’s corner, he offers these thoughts on the fight to ESPN:

“It’s hard to make a prediction (on who will win),” Fernandez told ESPN5.com. “But someone will go down. I just can’t predict who and which round. It will be a great fight.”

“We just tweaked a few things,” he said. “The camaraderie was different. It’s been years since we’ve had all Filipinos in our corner. It was enjoyable because all of us trainers were helping each other out. That’s why Manny himself said he was very pleased with this training camp. He liked what he saw and the whole of Team Pacquiao was very supportive.”

Buboy would continue by saying that Pacquiao insisted on receiving feedback from his team about how things were progressing and that he made a conscious effort to put in the necessary conditioning work to ensure that he will perform on fight night. The trainer says he’s scouted Matthysse plenty and the team understands that they don’t want to go toe-to-toe with Matthysse, who is considered a dangerous puncher.

All in all, though, Buboy believes that Pacquiao just has too many advantages in this fight, so he’s not overly concerned about the outcome. He just wants to see Manny carry over what he’s been doing in training camp to the fight itself, and he believes that should be plenty sufficient to deal with the task at hand.