By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao has signed a contract for Olympic style random drug testing to be done for his November 23rd fight against Brandon Rios, according to Yahoo Sports. The testing will be done by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency [VADA], and Rios is on board as well with the testing for their fight in Macao, China.
It’s definitely a good step forward for Pacquiao, but it’s too bad him and Floyd Mayweather Jr. were unable to come to an agreement about this back in 2009 when the two first attempt to negotiate a fight.
There was all kinds of problems when Mayweather said he wanted full random blood testing, eventually the issues became too much for the fight to get made.
It’s unclear whether testing will be part of all of Pacquiao’s future fights, but it’s likely. What’s not known is whether agreeing to the testing will be a condition in order to get a fight with Pacquiao.
He’s obviously someone that guys in the Top Rank stable are eager to fight, so if he requests that his opponents have to agree to it in order to fight him, he’ll likely have no problems getting people to agree to them.
The real question about the November 23rd fight isn’t the drug testing, it’s whether Pacquiao has got anything left after three straight fights where he’s looked poor. He appeared to lose to Juan Manuel Marquez in 2011, and Pacquiao was then beaten by Tim Bradley last year in June, followed by a 6th round knockout loss to Marquez last December.
It can’t be just a coincident that Pacquiao has looked bad in three fights. Looking bad once can be explained away, but not three times. There’s no excuse for Pacquiao not impressing in his last three fights. But more than just whether Pacquiao will look good against Rios, the important question is whether he can still take a head shot without nose diving into the canvas and staying down for a couple of minutes before getting up.
If the KO Pacquiao suffered last December has left him unable to take a hard shot without getting knocked out again, then his promoter Bob Arum is going to have an awful hard time making him a huge star in China with his pay per view bout.
Arum will have to take Pacquiao off of the difficult opposition if he wants to keep him fighting for three more years, because if he keeps putting him in with guys like Marquez, Rios and Bradley, Pacquiao will have too many losses in a row for him to remain a star that boxing fans will want to pay to see. Once a fighter is losing every time out, the fan interest dies quickly.
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