By Edward Chaykovsky
Former two-division world champion Paulie Malignaggi is still very suspicious of Manny Pacquiao's incredible ability to rise up in weight and capture titles in eight divisions.
Pacquiao first came on the HBO scene as a featherweight in 2003, but five years later he was fighting at welterweight and manhandling fighters like Miguel Cotto, Oscar De La Hoya, Joshua Clottey and even made a quick jump to junior middleweight for a one-sided beatdown of Antonio Margarito.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. and uncle/trainer Roger Mayweather, were very vocal about Pacquiao potentially using performance enhancing drugs - especially after the Filipino star rejected Mayweather's request for a random drug testing protocol for a possible mega-fight in 2010. The outbursts by Mayweather led to a lawsuit being filed by Pacquiao for defamation and confidential settlement was eventually reached.
For the last two years, Pacquiao has been tested for PEDs and the boxer has come up clean every time. Some critics have linked Pacquiao's inability to score a stoppage win to Mayweather's complaints of potential PED use. Pacquiao has not scored a stoppage win since late 2009 and Mayweather began a vocal campaign of potential PED use in early 2010.
"Saw that Tapia documentary, great story but was thinking something...As great a fighter as he was, can anyone ever have seen him coming close to moving up to the welterweight division? Wouldn't seem natural right?," Malignaggi wrote on the social networks.
"It actually sounds ridiculous when you look at how small he was yet he was great. So why does it seem so normal for everyone to think that Pacquiao moved up all those same amount of weight classes and more cleanly? There's no suspicion? Who moves up 10 weight classes? Who does that?"