By Ronnie Nathanielsz

THE US promotional tour to further heighten interest in the ?Battle of East and West? between Manny Pacquiao and Britain?s Ricky Hatton was called off.

But Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told www.insidesports.ph, Standard Today and Viva Sports that there would be a big media conference in Los Angeles in the last week of March after the initial kickoff in Britain. The planned promotional tour stops in New York and San Francisco were called off.

Arum said that after the trip to London and Manchester, Pacquiao would return to Los Angeles to start training, while Hatton will train for two weeks in England, before flying to Las Vegas to continue training under Floyd Mayweather Sr.

Pacquiao is scheduled to leave Manila for Los Angeles on Feb. 24 and Arum said he would join Pacquiao on the trip to London, leaving LA on Feb. 27.

?We will arrive in London on Saturday morning and do a tour of London with a camera crew. Then, we?ll take a train for Manchester on Sunday for a big press conference after which we will do a London press conference on Monday and on Tuesday morning we will fly back to LA to start his [Pacquiao?s] training.?

Arum predicted that with the styles of Pacquiao and Hatton and the tremendous interest in the showdown at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 2, ?this should be a truly great fight.?

Even as Pacquiao?s training camp is set to begin on March 2, Freddie Roach and conditioning expert Alex Ariza have already discussed preparations to get him into the very best shape for what is predicted to be a tough fight against the International Boxing Organization light welterweight champion.

Ariza told Standard Today that Roach talked to him about Pacquiao?s conditioning program for this fight.

?He discussed it with me earlier today [Tuesday in LA] and we will get into more details about it once Manny gets here. We will start revisiting the program and make some adjustments,? said Ariza.

?We are pretty much laying the groundwork for the preparation and for the running, the sprints and stuff like that for Manny,? he added.

The conditioning expert, who has been credited for his contribution to enhancing both the speed and power of Pacquiao, as clearly evidenced in his ninth-round knockout of World Boxing Council lightweight champion David Diaz and his eighth-round TKO win over Oscar de la Hoya, said Pacquiao ?might be in the gym for a few days,? before he leaves for London.