By Chris Williams: Former 8-division world champion Manny Pacquiao reportedly wants random drug testing for his November 24th fight against Brandon Rios in Macau, China. We don’t know which drug testing organization will be administering the tests, but one of them will.
This is interesting that Pacquiao wants the drug testing now because in the past his negotiations with Floyd Mayweather Jr. tanked in 2010 over drug testing. Mayweather wanted the full testing but Pacquiao wanted a period where there was no testing before the fight. The negotiations ending up going down the tubes from there and the fight wasn’t made.
Pacquiao’s adviser Michael Koncz said to RingTV “The fact is that Manny has requested random drug testing for this fight. We still haven’t decided which entity we’ll use. It’s going to be either USADA or [VADA].”
If Pacquiao ever faces Juan Manuel Marquez again, which is doubtful at this point, then he can at least have drug testing in place so that there won’t any suspicions after the fight should Pacquiao get knocked out cold again.
Some of Pacquiao’s fans to this day feel that Marquez was using performance enhancing drugs when he knocked Pacquiao out last December in the 6th round despite Marquez passing the entire drug testing for that fight. Some of Pacquiao’s fans doggedly believe he was dirty. With the extra testing, there can be no more suspicion involved.
It’s sad that extra testing has to be done because the normal testing should be more than enough to conclude that a fighter is clean, but it looks like they want to make sure that this fight and the future fights are with the random testing.
Pacquiao has lost his last two fights, and if he loses this one then you can pretty much forget all about a final fight between Pacquiao and Marquez. I’m sure Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum will still likely attempt to put the fight together, but I don’t see Marquez saying yes to it.
Marquez might not be excited about fighting a guy that has lost three consecutive fights and two of them by knockout. The fight would look almost like an old timers fight if Pacquiao goes into it with three straight losses and I can’t see Marquez wanting to be involved in it.
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