By Radio Rahim
The lawsuits are mounting up by disgruntled fans who believe they were duped by the "Fight of The Century."
As reported earlier, at least 32 lawsuits have been filed in several states, with fans claiming that Manny Pacquiao was an injured fighter when he entered the ring on May 2nd for his welterweight unification with Floyd Mayweather Jr. at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Pacquiao lost a twelve round unanimous decision but afterwards, at the post fight press conference, he revealed that he suffered a right shoulder injury in early April and further injured himself in the fourth round of the fight. Pacquiao underwent surgery two weeks ago.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuits are claiming that if Pacquiao's pre-fight injury was revealed to the public, many of them would have never made a decision to spend money on the event.
Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum, who promotes Pacquiao, says his fighter did injure himself in early April but he was "100%" recovered and sparring hard by the end of the camp. He says Pacquiao was perfectly fine when he entered the ring and requested a pre-fight numbing shot from the Nevada Commission as a precautionary measure.
"The last week, as predicted by the doctor, the shoulder was fine. Many was sparirng the last two weeks, sparring well. It wasn't until the end of the fourth round that Manny's shoulder was re-injured, but going into the fight Manny was 100%," Arum told BoxingScene.com.
Arum also denied that his company was trying to conceal Pacquiao's injury from Mayweather and his team. He says the agreed upon drug testing agency, USADA, was told about Pacquiao's injury when requests were being made to approve medications to treat the shoulder.
"Mayweather has used USADA for all of his fights, so the fact that it was completely revealed to USADA shows that there was no attempt to conceal from anyone. It was unfortunate that USADA didn't pass the information along to the [Nevada] commission. The idea that Manny would conceal a shoulder injury, but then ask the commission to get a numbing shot in the dressing room is absurd," Arum said.