By Norm Frauenheim, 15Rounds.com
Chances of no trouble in negotiations for the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight were about as good as Santa landing on your roof Thursday night. It just wasn’t going to happen, although talks had gone so smoothly that I had begun to wonder whether my roof was big enough for a sleigh and team of reindeer.
Now that there has been an inevitable flap over Mayweather’s demands that Pacquiao undergo Olympic-style drug-testing, both parties and the public can sweep aside naive assumptions that any of this was going to be easy. Will the fight happen? I think so.
Record-setting money figures to keep everybody at the table for as long as it takes, even if that means a date beyond the original, March 13. The money is real, unlike Mayweather’s suspicions about Pacquiao’s rise in weight, power and speed in the years since the welterweight was a reported 16-year-old making a pro debut at 107 pounds. I’m not sure how big Mayweather was at 16, but I’m guessing he wasn’t much heavier.
Random blood testing administered by the United States Anti-Doping Agency is a said to be a demand, but the process is being interpreted as another example of Mayweather’s gamesmanship. Timing makes it hard to argue with the interpretation. Why now? Why wasn’t Mayweather’s demand issued before all of the other reported agreements, including a 50-50 split of the purse and the date?
The breaking point appears to be blood-testing within 30 days of the fight. No way, says Pacquiao, his promoter Bob Arum and trainer Freddie Roach. Maybe this is cynical, but that point in Tuesday’s demand might be subject to negotiation, although any Mayweather attempt at gaming the lion’s share of the projected revenues only figures to further anger Arum, already enraged.
If it isn’t an attempt at a bigger share – which Mayweather had always said he deserved, then maybe it is just the first move of many in the inevitable mind games. If so, Mayweather has scored early. The burden of proof rests with Pacquiao, regardless of his spotless record of drug tests with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Fair or not, Pacquiao finds himself confronted by the sports version of the impossible question: Do you still beat your wife? Yes or no, you’re guilty.
In sports, it is the easiest smear to make these days. Ask Lance Armstrong. The world’s greatest cyclist has passed countless drug tests before and after his victories in the Tour de France, but that doesn’t eliminate the suspicions. He lives with them and I suspect Pacquiao also will have to.
Anybody at ringside for Pacquiao’s fights has heard the steroid whispered for the last few years. But they didn’t gain any traction until Mayweather’s father, Floyd Sr. generated headlines in September by saying that he thought there was truth to the talk. After listening to Floyd Sr.’s poems and trash-talk, I often have wonder what kind of substances he has been using. That said, I also think there is a method to his madness and that method might be in play now.
It has put Pacquiao on the defensive. Already, there are jokes from the Mayweather corner about how he says that he doesn’t like needles. That didn’t keep him out of a tattoo parlor.
Pacquiao also has said that he fears he might be weakened if too much blood is drawn during the week before opening bell. I’ve seen blood drawn from Olympic swimmers. While watching the Australians train at altitude in an Olympic-sized pool at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff before the 2004 Athens games, they repeatedly had their earlobes pricked for some blood as a way to monitor them while training. It didn’t seem to weaken them.
Nevertheless, there also have been complaints. Asafa Powell, a Jamaican sprinter and a relay gold-medalist, griped about the number of tests he had to undergo in Beijing at the 2008 Games. It was a hassle, but Powell still went home with the gold.
At a training camp, the unannounced arrival of drug testers — with needles and test tubes in hand — is a distraction, no doubt. In a fight as big as Mayweather-Pacquiao, however, it would be just one of many.
It is inevitable that Mayweather advisor Leonard Ellerbe says that Pacquiao has something to hide if he doesn’t agree to random blood tests during the month before the fight. Even under USADA guidelines, however, there are athletes who pass the tests and yet are still believed to be abusers.
Regardless of whether Pacquiao passes tests conducted by USADA or Santa, that question is now with him. He can’t win that one. But he can fight and, in the end, I think he will, because only the money is a verifiable substance.
Source: 15rounds.com
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