NSAC wasn’t told of Pacquiao’s injured shoulder before fight, says Rafael

By Dan Ambrose: Manny Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach said last night that Pacquiao came into his mega-fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. with an injured shoulder. Dan Rafael of ESPN says that Pacquiao said that they asked the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) for an exception for a shot for his injured shoulder, but they said no.

NSAC chairman Francisco Aguilar is saying that they weren’t told of Pacquiao’s injured shoulder before the fight. This leaves the question whether the NSAC was actually alerted or not about the injury before the fight.

“Manny said they asked NSAC about getting an exemption for some kind of shot but was denied,” Rafael said on his twitter. “NSAC chairman Aguilar says his commission was not told of Manny’s injury.”

The question is if the NSAC wasn’t told about Pacquiao’s injury ahead of time then why is Pacquiao saying that the NSAC was told? Is this something that Pacquiao was told by his management? If so, which members of his management told him that the NSAC was alerted about the injury?

“Manny saying he doesn’t want to make excuses but he is doing that by talking about the shoulder the whole presser,” Rafael said. “Freddie said the injury happened when he [Pacquiao] banged shoulders with a sparring partner. Manny said he hurt his right shoulder in training camp two weeks before the fight and thought about postponing.”

If the injury was bad enough that Pacquiao was thinking of not going through with the fight, he should have actually done so instead of taking the fight. If he and his trainer Roach are going to make such a big production about the injury in what appears to be a case of damage control to lessen the impact of his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Mayweather last night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, then Pacquiao probably should have pulled out of the fight.

So many boxing fans spent a great deal of money to see the fight, both in ordering it on pay-per-view and seeing it live. There were fans that paid huge amounts of money to purchase tickets to the fight, travel to Vegas, and stay in expensive hotels for the weekend. If Pacquiao was injured like he says he was, then it would have been better for the fans if he had simply postponed the fight until his injured right shoulder was 100 percent.