By Chris Williams: In a recent interview of trainer Freddie Roach at 790thezone, Roach said that they’ll be looking to have Manny Pacquiao meet Floyd Mayweather halfway for the blood testing for a mega fight between the two fighters. Mayweather wanted the blood testing to go all the way up until 14 days before the fight, whereas Pacquiao wanted the blood testing not to go anywhere inside of 24 days because he felt that it got in the way of his training. Obviously, 24 days is a huge number for monitoring for performance enhancing drugs.
Mayweather might as well abandoned the idea altogether if that was the final number, because that’s just too much time to give without testing if he was seriously worried about facing someone that might or might not be using. However, Roach is talking about meeting Mayweather halfway between the 24 and 14 day number, at either 17 or 18 days. That still seems like a big number of days to have in between testing as far as I’m concerned. But the question is whether both Pacquiao and Mayweather can agree to that number.
If Mayweather is worried about Pacquiao potentially being able to do something in those days, he probably will say forget it and keep insisting on the 14 day number. And in the same token, Pacquiao might insist on the 24 days that he originally asked for. Roach said that Top Rank promoter Bob Arum was traveling to the Philippines to go over the offer with Pacquiao. If there’s anyone that can convince Pacquiao to accept a lesser number of days, it’s Arum. There’s so much riding on this and it would seem silly if the fight ends up not being made because Mayweather and Pacquiao can’t find a middle ground.
I can see how Mayweather would not be happy with getting less than what he asked for the first time around. I mean two weeks is a lot of time to give a person to not be drug tested if the idea is to make sure they’re clean. 17 or 18 days is even worse. But I can understand Pacquiao as well. If he’s got a thing about being stuck with a needle and having blood drawn from his body, he could end up getting traumatized if he mentally believes that having small amounts of blood removed from his body weakens him in some way. This is why it’s unfortunate there isn’t a third type of testing that can be used to get around this problem.
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