By David Mayo, The Grand Rapids Press
The longer this impasse goes, the worse it looks for Manny Pacquiao.
If you’re really the pound-for-pound king, if you’re really not using performance-enhancers, then you do exactly what Floyd Mayweather asks. You get yourself poked with a needle on a handful of occasions -- certainly fewer times than Pacquiao has been poked with a tattoo needle -- then make Mayweather pay for his arrogance on the night of March 13.
If you’re the pound-for-pound king, and you didn’t get that way through sophisticated doping techniques for which you know there are masking methods and/or no urine detection technology, you give up a few drops of blood without any knowledge when you might be asked to do so, a few times between now and the fight, then you do your job.
If you’re the pound-for-pound king, you step up and make yourself heard on this issue, and quit letting your promoter and your trainer bellow that Mayweather’s demand is a method of seeking a way to avoid the fight.
Mayweather, the Grand Rapids native, agreed to every contractual tenet.
He accepted a 50-50 split, even though his pay-per-view fights against common opponents greatly outsold Pacquiao’s.
He agreed to pay Pacquiao a $10 million penalty if he comes in even half-a-biscuit or one swallow of his beloved Mountain Dew heavier than the 147-pound limit. That’s astounding, given that Mike Tyson was fined $3 million for biting a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear.
All he asked for in return was random blood testing.
And Pacquiao wouldn’t comply.
The longer it goes on, the more we start to sneer at the Filipino idol and wonder why.
Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, has been busy at work spinning public favor in his fighter’s direction. And Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, has lambasted Mayweather for a demand that he somehow deems disruptive to training.
Forget that Pacquiao has endured any number of pinpricks for tattoos, including one he got just before his most recent fight, against Miguel Cotto, who declared the Filipino the hardest puncher he ever faced after getting knocked out by him, which certainly arched some eyebrows among the performance-enhancing theorists, considering the 40-pound gap Pacquiao has traversed since turning professional.
Forget that since the fight fell apart Tuesday night because of the drug-testing issue, a number of experts have declared it ridiculous that Pacquiao was willing to undergo blood testing on a set schedule, but not at all within 30 days of the fight, and that the top executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Association told the Los Angeles Times such a schedule would allow plenty of time to “dope to the gills and get away with it.”
That’s what Pacquiao’s side wants everyone to forget.
Well, here’s a suggestion: Random means random, and if you don’t submit, you only fuel the fire the Mayweathers have been pumping with bellows for the last three months.
We’re talking about a few drops of blood every few weeks. Within a few minutes, anyone who has blood drawn for a drug test has fully regenerated it.
Any assertion that Pacquiao might be weakened because he has blood drawn a few times in a 10-week period before a fight is either deception or ignorance. But not both.
Here’s another suggestion: Set the pre-fight testing schedule so both fighters get tested randomly once between Jan. 1-15, again between Jan. 16-31, again between Feb. 1-15, and once more between Feb. 16-March 6. That guarantees no testing in the final seven days before the fight, only four pre-fight tests in total, and the randomness which is at the core of the Mayweather camp’s demands.
Here’s another suggestion: Let the drug-testers stand there every day during sparring, and the first time Pacquiao gets a fat lip or bloody nose, just squeeze some into a vial.
That’s how asinine the Pacquiao camp’s claims look in a business where lost blood is a day-to-day job hazard.
Failing that, someone really is weaseling out of the fight.
And that someone isn’t Floyd Mayweather.
E-mail David Mayo at dmayo@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/David_Mayo
Source: mlive.com
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