An hour before the fourth fight between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez, the Mexican said in an interview that his training camp went well and stretched for a good four months.

Limited footage from his camp also showed Marquez doing plyometric exercises and reports said that he did weight training.

And when fight night came, the training of Marquez paid off with him knocking down Pacquiao in the third round, and sending the Filipino to dreamland in the dramatic sixth round. Although Pacquiao was able to register knockdown in the fourth round, and bloodied the Mexican’s nose, it was obvious that Marquez came into the fight with more firepower compared to his first three meetings with the Filipino.

How Marquez transformed himself into a powerful welterweight can perhaps provide lessons on how trainers can shape up their fighters for the big wars. In fact, what Marquez did during his latest training was neither nothing new nor rocket science.

The case of Marquez even brings to mind boxing history’s two fighters who went through intensive training programs just to gain tremendous condition on fight night: Evander Holyfield and Rocky Marciano.

If there is any similarity between Marquez and Holyfield, it is that both of them were “manufactured” to fight at a higher weight. The junior welterweight (140 pounds) Marquez became welterweight (147 pounds) Marquez. The cruiserweight (200 pounds) Holyfield was remade into heavyweight (above 200 pounds) Holyfield.

And when they fought men who did not dwarf them, the results were deadly. They won convincingly.

Hatfield’s strength-building regimen
In a website post, Frederick Hatfield Ph.D, the popular strength trainer of Holyfield, described how he transformed the American into a formidable heavyweight.

“The time-honored — but unfortunately ill-conceived — practice of long, slow distance work as a conditioning regimen for boxers is what Evander learned from the training dinosaurs of his youth, and had continued with for years. When I was brought aboard his team, prior to his fight against Buster Douglas in 1990, Evander was in sad physical condition considering the specific demands of his sport,” he said.

Compared to the strength coaches of today, Hatfield is a freak in terms of human strength. At 45 years old, he achieved a squat with 1,014 pounds.

For the Douglas fight, Hatfield made Holyfield go through a 12-week conditioning program of which the first three months were devoted to building muscle mass. Light plyometrics were also introduced in the first month. During the next three weeks, the conditioning for Holyfield
included workouts to improve explosiveness.

In weeks seventh to ninth, the conditioning program emphasized the maximization of explosive strength, and the incorporation of weighted plyometrics and hill/stairs running, among others.

The 10th to 12th week saw a shift to “shock plyometrics” and a heavy emphasis on boxing skills, among others.

The Douglas fight saw Holyfield made easy work of his opponent, knocking Douglas out in the third round.

Holyfield would later beat Mike Tyson twice.

Obviously, Hatfield’s conditioning program for Holyfield can be considered revolutionary for its time, since it deviated from the old-school type of boxing training, which emphasized such carrying stones and chopping wood, among other regimens.

“Finally, in my view, the best way to weight train for competitive boxing is via a cycled training schedule. This type of training schedule integrates workouts and exercises that will meet all the basic performance demands of boxing, strength, power, speed, agility, and strength endurance,” Hatfield said.

Marciano’s ‘monastic devotion’
But when it came to pure dedication to training, it might be hard to beat Marciano, who retired with a clean record of 49 wins with 43 knockouts.

M. Skehan, author of Rocky Marciano: Biography of a First Son, said that the Brockton
“Of all boxers, it seems to have been Rocky Marciano who trained with the most monastic devotion; his training methods have become legendary. Marciano was willing to seclude himself from the world, including his wife and family, for as long as three months before a fight. Apart from the grueling physical ordeal of this period and the obsessive preoccupation with diet and weight and muscle tone, Marciano concentrated on one thing; the upcoming fight,” Skehan said in his book.

Marciano trained five to six months, and went to lengths to concentrate on the fight at hand.

“In the final month Marciano would not write a letter since a letter related to the outside world. During the last ten days before a fight he would see no mail, take no telephone calls, meet no new acquaintances,” Skehan said.

The overall result of Marciano’s dedication was his domination of the heavyweight division during his time, even if he only stood at 5’10” and never weighed beyond 190 pounds.

His conditioning was so good that in his first bid for the heavyweight title, he still had the power to knock then champion Jersey Joe Walcott in the 13th round in a fight that saw Walcott bloody and batter Marciano for much of the fight.

The vaunted right hand that landed squarely on Walcott’s jaw became known as the “Suzie.” In their rematch, Marciano left nothing to chance and stopped Walcott in the first round.

Holyfield and Marciano are but a few examples of boxers who never left their training to chance. And the same can be said of Marquez for his third and fourth bout with Pacquiao.

In comparison, Pacquiao relied more on the old school training that kept strength conditioning coach Alex Ariza much to the sidelines during fight preparation. Pacquiao also devoted only two months to training.

While Pacquiao showed that he still could knock down and mix it up with the Marquez, it was obvious that the Mexican had successfully increased his punching power and this was clearly the result of the non-traditional workouts his team included in his training. Just look at the beautiful right that knocked out Pacquiao.