Trainer Ronnie Shields Joins Chris Arreola's Camp

Posted by Ramon Aranda on 01.14.2011

Arreola hoping Shields can make a difference.

With his 2011 return to the ring only a few weeks away, Chris Arreola (29-2, 5 KOs) has added Ronnie Shields to his team in hopes that the renowned trainer can make a difference.

"I spoke with (Arreola's advisor) Al Haymon a couple of months ago about possibly working with Chris," Shields revealed. "They called me a few days ago and told me they were sending Chris down to Houston and we had the first workout this past Wednesday."

Shields has worked alongside Mike Tyson, Vernon Forrest, Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker and Meldrick Taylor, to name a few.

Despite only two pro losses, Arreola has been criticized for most of his career for an apparent lack of commitment to training, highlighted by his last three subpar performances against Vitali Klitschko, Tomasz Adamek and Manuel Quezada. Having been trained by longtime friend Henry Ramirez, Arreola's entire team, including Ramirez, concurred that it was time to make a change in training camp.

"Henry let me go ahead and train Chris the way I thought it should be done on the first day of training," Shields acknowledged. "Chris hit the mitts and shadowboxed. Then I discussed with Henry what I had seen. It was the first time I'd seen Chris shadowbox and I told him that there were some things he wasn't doing correctly that he was doing on the pads. Basically, it was that he was lunging with his right hand. And I told him that we need to work on trying to correct it and get rid of the bad habits. We ended up doing about 10 rounds that day."

Arreola is set to return on the January 28 ESPN2 "Friday Night Fights" main event against Joey Abell (27-4, 26 KOs) at Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, CA.