Will Marquez’s body change give Pacquiao’s fans an excuse if he loses?

By Boxing News - 12/06/2012 - Comments

Image: Will Marquez's body change give Pacquiao's fans an excuse if he loses?By Chris Williams: If you look around the Net you’ll have no doubt noticed that a lot of people are suspicious about Juan Manuel Marquez’s new physique that he’s built with the help of his strength and conditioning trainer Angel Hernandez and a lot of good old fashioned hard work in the weight gym.

However, Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach was immediately suspicious and made comments in an interview with USA Today where he wonder if Marquez was using performance enhancing drugs to build up his body. This has angered Hernandez, who is threatening to sue Roach for the comments.

Marquez sees it as a poor attempt of gamesmanship from Roach in trying to mess with his mind by implanting the idea of PEDS in the minds of boxing fans with his interview with USA Today. I still don’t understand why Roach would want to pull that card from the bottom of the deck because that’s one of the worse things you can do because ignorant boxing fans will believe anything, especially ones that need a reason to make themselves feel better if their hero gets beaten on Saturday night.

But Marquez has said he’s not let Roach get to him, as he knows Roach’s tricks how he likes to play mind games with Pacquiao’s opponents to try and get any kind of edge he can for him. In some cases, like in bouts against Shane Mosley and Antonio Margarito, it was hardly even necessary because it was such a mismatch to begin with.

But what all this is leading to is Marquez not getting the credit that he should if he wins the fight on Saturday. I have a real strong feeling that’s what’s going to happen. Marquez will win, and a lot of boxing fans will say it was because he was using PEDs. They’ll say this without any proof other than Marquez having more muscles that he put on through his own hard work. It’s going to be sad because you can already see the excuses forming, and my guess is we won’t see a 5th fight between Marquez and Pacquiao because so many fans will be spouting ridiculous accusations about Marquez without any proof whatsoever.



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