By Lem Satterfield, FanHouse
HBO's Larry Merchant recently shared his thoughts with FanHouse on the drug-testing controversy which led to the stalled negotiations for the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight.
Merchant, 78, has been covering historical bouts as far back as Muhammad Ali's "Rope-A-Dope" victory over George Foreman -- the 1974 "Rumble In The Jungle" -- as a columnist for The New York Post.
Fighters such as Shane Mosley, Roy Jones, James Toney, Fernando Vargas, and, most recently, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Shannon Briggs have either admitted to use of or tested positive for banned substances, with Briggs' first-round knockout of Marcus McGee last month being ruled a no-contest.
Merchant, however, said that he has no reason to suspect Pacquiao.
FanHouse: In your years covering boxing, have you ever witnessed a fight's negotiations reaching an impasse over anything but money?
Larry Merchant: Never. And, well, I can go back to the third fight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basilio. It was always, always about money. It was always about how you cut up the pie. It was never about a side issue like this has been. So, to me, ego and emotion do get involved in negotiations.
I think of negotiations as a kind of dominance ritual in which both fighters are trying to show that they're the man, they're the stronger guy, they're the guy who can impose his will on the other guy, and that this will somehow show up in the ring. I saw this all as part of that dominance ritual.
I still believe that they'll find a way to resolve it, probably by next week. If anybody is going to lose in this fight, then making $30, or, $40 million should seem to make it worthwhile.
FH: So what are your thoughts on this entire Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao situation?
Merchant: From the beginning, I thought that it was gamesmanship. That Mayweather has been very clever and intuitive about picking out the vulnerabilities -- real or imagined -- of opponents, and using that as psychological warfare to build up the fight.
He's done that in the past, so that's how I initially saw this. There are several reasons for my view on this. No. 1, what if they found something? Does Mayweather really want the fight to be canceled, given the fact that he believes strongly that he's going to win?
Also, given the certainty of making upwards of $30, or, maybe $40 million, does he really want to find something? You can flip that and say, 'If that's what Pacquiao has used to move up the scale, and Mayweather believes that he's going to win any way and is going to make all of that money, then he ought to be thanking the drug-maker.'
If the drug-maker has delivered this kind of package to Mayweather -- a guy he can beat and a guy that he can make all of this money off of -- then why would he want to screw that up?
FH: So you still believe that Floyd Mayweather is playing mind games?
Merchant: I thought that it was gamesmanship because I didn't see anything to be won by this. If you think that he's been using illegal substances, do you want him called out before the fight and revealed and blow the whole deal? I never got the point of all of this.
The story about somebody saying that somebody came to him and said, 'Can we conceal this?' That's more craziness. I find it hard that anybody would have even thought of that. Once you do this is public, that's, to me, even more strangeness and weirdness.
FH: So what do you believe is the point of the drug-testing?
Merchant: I'm trying to think, 'Well, what are they trying to do?' Are they trying to agitate Manny Pacquiao, which he's done before? Are they trying to build a controversy to make the fight even bigger than it already is? Or is there something real that they're concerned about.
The only thing that I can think of -- and I'm not an expert on uses of drugs, and I'm very skeptical that drugs have helped any fighters. But if they think, for example, that he uses something to build his stamina, his energy, something like I believe that this EPO is, then maybe they want to discourage him from doing it.
If it's not gamesmanship, then what they're really saying is that 'Nobody can be as good as Manny Pacquiao unless he's helped by something.' Maybe it reflects on Floyd Mayweather. Even if he believes that he's going to win, maybe he think that there's a chance that he won't.
Again, from things that he's said in the past, to him, losing is worse than death because he's wrapped his identity up so much in the idea of not losing the fight. He's used that to try to deflect all of the criticism that has come his way from the boxing world and in the boxing media that he has avoided all of the real top welterweights to fight smaller guys.
Being undefeated is so important to him, that maybe there's a part of this that expresses or reflects his concern.
FH: You say that Manny Pacquiao's upward movement and subsequent success is not unprecedented?
Merchant: Throughout boxing history, there have been exceptional fighters, and exceptional elite fighters who have started their careers as teenagers and moved up the scale dramatically over time. Is it exceptional? Absolutely. But Manny Pacquiao is exceptional. But it's not unprecedented.
It's not like there is some mysterious force that is completely unexplainable in a natural way. And I could cite half a dozen guys, particularly going back to Ted 'Kid' Lewis, who weighed 114-to-116 when he started as a teenager, and who weighed 166 near the end of his career when he was fighting the top light heavyweights in the world.
Mickey Walker, who was a welterweight, actually fought to a draw with a future heavyweight champion. There was Henry Armstrong, who started at 120 and wound up fighting middleweights. In the more modern era, there is Roberto Duran, who started as a teen-aged bantamweight and went all the way up to middleweight as a title-holder.
There's Alexis Arguello. Every one of these guys was an extraordinary fighter. I don't know that they knew about steroids in their days. Nobody ever accused those guys of being drugged up. So, to me, it's not without precedent. Oscar De La Hoya once fought at 128, and then, he fought two middleweights in the high 150s.
FH: But none of them won seven titles in as many weight classes.
Merchant: It's widely reported and accurately reported that Pacquiao won a flyweight title. When Manny Pacquiao came to the U.S., Manny Pacquiao was in his early 20s, and he was a featherweight. I regard him as a featherweight or a super featherweight, a guy who weighed 125-to-130, something like that.
That was what his natural fighting weight was when he was fighting Marco Antonio Barrera, and Erik Morales, and Juan Manuel Marquez, and so on. And like many fighters who conquer their division, they start looking for fights in higher divisions -- challenges, titles -- to make more money. That's what he's done.
Basically, at this moment, he's a 140-pounder. He weighed 138 when he fought Ricky Hatton, which was two fights ago. Against De La Hoya and Miguel Cotto, he weighed in the low 140s [actually 142, and, 144, respectively]. To me, I attribute that to the fact that, unlike most fighters on the day of a weigh-in, he can eat breakfast and lunch.
He's really a 140-pounder, and probably could fight at 135 if there was somebody out there against whom he could make $40 million. And Mayweather himself, as an amateur, also weighed in the teens. He was 125 pounds in the Olympics when he was 18 or 19 years old.
Going by the same standard, I see [Mayweather] as a lightweight who elected to go up in weight to make money. His best fighting weight in his 20s was as a lightweight. Toward the end of his 20s, he started to move up, and so on. So, to me, where they are now, one guy is a 140-pounder [Pacquiao,] and the other guy is a 147-pounder [Mayweather.]
I don't consider myself naive or paranoid about drugs, or the use of these things. If I saw somebody doing things that I thought was unexplainable, I would raise my hand and say, 'What's going on here?' just like everybody else. But I would rather err on the side of being skeptical of the drug stuff than being accusatory.
The Rise of Manny Pacquiao:
*Jan. 1, 1995: Debuted at 106 pounds with a four-round decision over Edmund Enting Ignacio
*Dec. 4, 1998: Weighed 112, Won flyweight (112 pounds) debut, WBC Title KO 8 Chatchai Sasakul
* Dec. 18, 1999: Weighed 122, won super bantamweight (122) debut, WBC International Title KO 2 Reynante Jamili
* June 23, 2001: Weighed 121, won IBF Super Bantamweight Title TKO 6 Lehlo Ledwaba
* Nov. 15, 2003: Weighed 125, won debut as featherweight (126) TKO 11 Marco Antonio Barrera
* May 8, 2004: Weighed 125, fought for WBC and IBF Featherweight titles D 12 Juan Manuel Marquez
* March 19, 2005: Weighed 129.5, lost super featherweight (130) debut UD 12 Erik Morales
* June 28, 2008: Weighed 134.5, won lightweight (135) debut and WBC Title KO 9 David Diaz.
* Dec. 6, 2008: Weighed 142, won welterweight (147) debut TKO 8 Oscar De La Hoya
* May 2, 2009: Weighed 138, won light welterweight (140) debut KO 2 Ricky Hatton
* Nov. 14, 2009: Weighed career-high 144, won WBO Welterweight Title TKO 12 Miguel Cotto.
Others who rose to prominence:
Henry Armstrong: Debuted at 120 pounds, won world titles at 126, 135, 147, drew for middleweight crown.
Alexis Arguello: Won titles at 126, 130, 135 and 140.
Oscar De La Hoya: Debuted at 133, won world titles at 130, 135, 140, 147, 154 and 160.
Roberto Duran: Debuted at 118, won titles at 135, 147, 154, and 160
Tommy Hearns: Debuted at 147, won titles at 147, 154, 160, 168 and 175.
Sugar Ray Leonard: Debuted at 141, won titles at 147, 154, 160, 168
Sugar Ray Robinson: Debuted at 134, won titles at 147, 160, lost 175 title bout to Joey Maxim.
Source: boxing.fanhouse.com
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