Editor’s note: Manny Pacquiao’s buildup for his mega-fight with Miguel Cotto continues. After turmoil in Pac-Man’s camp in the first episode of Pacquiao-Cotto 24/7, thing began to settle down for the pound-for-pound champ. Fire Quinito’s special guest critic, Alekos Orendain, takes us through the week in Pacquiao’s preparation.

I have to say, it’s been an interesting week for the National Fist. Most of us have probably seen clips of Manny singing Sometimes When We Touch on the Jimmy Kimmel Show (seriously, it’s not that he’s going up against a full fledged elite welterweight that has me convinced that he’s got the biggest balls in boxing, it’s that he has the guts to take his videoke trained singing voice and showcase it in a primetime talk show so very emphatically) and have probably read the amazing article in Time magazine (where he also makes the cover) about him and his life.

But like Manny’s training camp, we shouldn’t get too distracted by events happening outside the ring, we shouldn’t forget that in a little more than a week, he’s going against his toughest foe in the ring in what may prove to be his second most difficult task ever (after singing live on American national TV).

After watching the second episode of 24/7, I’m getting even more worried. It seems that training got even worse when his camp moved to Manila, with politicians apparently coming in droves to rub shoulders with Manny. And in case you aren’t sick of these politicians sucking up to Manny, a brief interview of our much-maligned president (short as it was, it still managed to make my blood boil, how dare she ruin my viewing experience) was shown. Probably just to spite us. Any hopes I had that maybe the distractions weren’t that bad were dashed when they showed clips of him pretty much getting beat up during sparring. He just looked horrible and seemed to be more on the receiving end of the punches.

(Ed: How about Freddie Roach’s revelation during the episode that Pacquiao basically had him fire Michael Moorer – an key cog during Pacquiao’s training for the Hatton fight – because Moorer threw out a couple of Pacquiao’s politician-buddies during training?)

Still, there were some bright spots being shown. He looked good in the clips they showed of him doing exercises in Manila and doing pad work back in the Wildcard Gym in L.A. But then again, it just might be the cool soundtrack they added to these clips that made it seem like he was doing well (maybe I’m just not a fan of Puerto Rican music but it really seems like Pac gets the cooler soundtrack most of the time). I still can’t shake of the images of Pac being battered from pillar to post during sparring.

Miguel Cotto’s training camp is steadily chugging along, there’s really not much to say except that he looks as focused, as mean as ever and that his whole camp sucks at golf. There were some interesting tidbits about the family rift caused by Miguel’s uncle being fired as his trainer but by all indications, no one except Miguel’s father is really bothered by it. So us Manny fans can discard any hopes we have that maybe Miguel’s camp has its own troubles. The only positive thing I took from what HBO has shown is that, maybe the fighter who shows his ass during 24/7 will lose. Hatton did it and lost, Cotto did it as well and as much as that image hurt my eyes, maybe, just maybe, he’ll lose too because of it.