By Dave Lahr: A fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao may never take place in the future unless Mayweather or Pacquiao change their minds about the random blood testing for the fight. Pacquiao doesn’t appear to have changed his mind one bit about the blood testing. In an interview with CNN, Pacquiao said “If Floyd wants that fight to happen then I think let the commission who implements the rules, not him, make the rules for the fight.”
Let’s hope that Pacquiao isn’t going to stick to following only what the commissions says on this before fighting Mayweather, because the commission only directs that urine be checked, not blood. Mayweather wants blood to be tested for the presence of performance enhancing drugs that aren’t picked up by urine. Human growth hormone is one of those drugs that Mayweather is concerned about.
Pacquiao was willing to have his blood tested randomly up to a certain point, but didn’t want his blood to be tested within 24 days of the fight because he felt it would weaken him. But in this interview, it sounds as if Pacquiao’s stance has hardened about this subject. “Floyd is just a fighter,” Pacquiao says. “We’re both fighters so he doesn’t need to make the rules like that.”
What Pacquiao seems to be forgetting it that it was something that Mayweather wanted to have included in the contract, just as Pacquiao’s team asked for a $10 million dollar penalty to be included for every pound that either of the fighters came in over weight. This was something Mayweather agreed to.
It wasn’t a hard and fast rule for all boxing fights. And when you think about it, this rule heavily favored Pacquiao because Mayweather is the bigger fighter and the one that had recently came in over weight limit in his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez. This isn’t just a one-way deal. Both fighters would be giving up a little to make this fight happen.
Pacquiao might not like having his blood tested, but to make a fight with Mayweather happen and to get a payday that could be as big as $40 million, Pacquiao would have to give in on this one issue. If Pacquiao wants to fight Mayweather, he will have to probably agree to have his blood tested randomly. I don’t see Mayweather giving in about this. If Pacquiao has decided not to have his blood tested in the future, then he might be better off not wasting his time talking about the Mayweather fight anymore.
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