By Edward Chaykovsky
Former two-division world champion Paulie Malignaggi has been airing his opinion on Manny Pacquiao for several years.
Malignaggi, along with a few other personalities in the sport, believe Pacquiao was at one time taking performance enhancing drugs.
The Filipino superstar captured titles in a record eight weight divisions. From 2008 to 2010, Pacquiao made an incredible leap from lightweight to welterweight and eight beatdown or absolutely dominated most of the top names like Oscar De La Hoya, Ricky Hatton, Joshua Clottey, Miguel Cotto, Shane Mosley and even moved up to 150-pounds to beat a much larger Antonio Margarito.
Around that period, suspicions exploded when Pacquiao refused to accept Floyd Mayweather's demand for random drug testing. Their negations fell apart because of that singular disagreement.
As Pacquiao entered the fight on May 2nd with Mayweather, Malignaggi made a pre-fight prediction that Pacquiao - because both fighters were being randomly drug tested - would not have the speed, explosiveness or power that he displayed in the past.
"My opinion is very educated," Malignaggi told the NY Daily News. "The drug-tested Pacquiao wasn't explosive, wasn't very scary."
Pacquiao claims his performance was affected by a pre-existing right shoulder injury that was further injured in the fourth round of the fight. Pacquiao underwent surgery last Wednesday.
"You see it when they (drug) tested him he hasn't looked so sensational (in his subsequent fights)," Malignaggi said. "The guy blatantly refused random drug testing over needles. Think about it. He threw $50 million dollars out the window for not liking needles (in 2009) and now he's complaining he wasn't allowed to get a needle (for a shot of lidocaine and other anti-inflammatories in the dressing room) before fighting Floyd Mayweather on May 2 (to treat his shoulder)."
