Manny Pacquiao will fight Joshua Clottey for his newly acquired welterweight title. This promises to be a more action-packed fight in the ring than the one everybody wanted. Fine, I can live with that. However, this poses a more difficult question to answer than the one about his refusal to undergo random blood testing. Why fight a bigger, stronger and more dangerous opponent (somebody who can really hurt him) for much less money?
I have 4 possible answers:
- Pacquiao wants to punish the Mayweathers and Golden Boy.
- Pacquiao's lack of knowledge about PEDs and their detection and thinks that Mayweather is just trying to get to him mentally.
- Pacquiao uses PEDs - HGH in particular.
- Freddie Roach believes that Pacquiao is not ready to take on Jr. just yet.
- While it is true that the other camp won't get the money they are expected to get, he, too, stands to lose financially. Not a very good time to do that when you are plunging yourself head on to the political battles in the Philippines which is pretty much ruled by who hands-out the most money. Besides, he already has a lawsuit filed. That ought to be enough vengeance if he wins as Sr. is probably going to be found guilty;
- I believe it's true that Mayweather is trying to get the psychological advantage in everyway. This includes subjecting Pacquiao, whom his father accused of taking steroids, to random blood testing and inconveniencing him during training. However, if you know that this is just a ploy, would you let it affect you? At the beginning of this blood testing issue, Pacquiao himself may not have enough knowledge about HGH and its detection. I, myself, was partly mistaken in my other post of December 23, "Fraud Run-a-Mayweather, The Devil, and the Fear of Losing" when I said that urine testing is the most effective and efficient way to detect illegal substances in one's system. The truth is urine sample is insufficient in detecting HGH as of now. The new process being developed using urine sample to detect HGH, although already proven to be effective, is still neither scientifically nor legally acceptable at this time. By this time, however, Pacquiao should have been told by his advisers that blood testing is required to detect HGH and that should be done in random to ensure it cannot be hidden by masking agents/drugs or by knowledge of the detection period (one would take it only at the time when it would no longer be detected by the scheduled sampling date).
- I hope this is not the case. Freddie Roach and Michael Moorer, although now separated, are two of the few credible names in boxing today. They both say publicly that Pacquiao is clean. I hope they are telling the truth because people are becoming suspicious of Pacquiao and Alex Ariza. Ever since he hired his conditioning coach, Pacquiao has been looked at as somebody who is approaching superhuman abilities. "He was just too f---ing fast...For a while I thought Freddie was there hitting me, too…Did somebody get the number of that truck?" David Diaz exclaimed during his humorous post fight interview with Jim Lempley. Although he added that it is not so much the power that he was worried about but the speed, it was so evident in Rounds 7 and 8 that he was feeling the punishment he was taking. And in Round 9, after he was told to throw punches or get it stopped by the referee, one lightly thrown left cross dropped him face first scaring everybody that he could be seriously hurt. It is just a special blend of natural supplements that he is giving Pacquiao, Ariza explained. Plus, Pacquiao and other fighters under Ariza wake up at 5 in the morning to do "crazy stuff". Special blend and crazy stuff – my friends, are these super special and Hanibalistic crazy that no one else in the last 100 and some years has discovered? I would like to believe that Ariza is really doing wonders with Pacquiao which is not at all impossible. My only problem here is that accepting the testing terms would be the best way to prove their innocence. I do not really buy the superstition, fear of needles and/or blood, or the weakening effect as reason for refusing random blood testing.
- This is what I believe is the real answer. Pacquiao has been fighting southpaws since his training sessions for the Diaz fight in June 2008. A lot of people may not be aware that Dela Hoya, Hatton, and Cotto are all southpaws using the conventional stance because they want their jabs to be deceptively more powerful. The other common denominator is that their main weapon is the left hook which is susceptible to a right hook counter. See my older post on December 5, "Round 1 to Mayweather: Is Manny Pacquiao Becoming Overly Confident?" for another discussion on this topic. In short, Pacquiao has been so used to fighting the same style of opponents in training and in the ring for so long. Having mentioned that, it is therefore, logical for Pacquiao to train and fight a real right hander with a strong defense and counter punching technique before going against Mayweather. He needs to get used to and beat, not have problems with, the Marquez-like foes again. Yuri Foreman and some other guys as sparring partners and Clottey as opponent shall provide that. Team Pacquiao wanted to make sure they are ready for Mayweather and beat him this fall or later this year even with the Olympic-style testing in place. A fight and a convincing win against Mayweather with random blood testing after beating Clottey is the only way to erase doubts about Pacquiao. Too bad, the elections were done by then. As it is right now, he stands to lose his congressional bid because of tarnished refutations. But who knows, it's the Philippines where anything can happen.
