By Mark Vester
Former BALCO founder Victor Conte, regarded as one of the leading experts on performance enhancing drugs, believes Floyd Mayweather Jr. is justified in requesting random Olympic style drug testing for a potential fight with Manny Pacquiao.
Conte appeared on BoxingScene.com's official audio show, Leave It In The Ring Radio, and gave his thoughts on the Mayweather-Pacquiao drug testing debate. Negotiations for Mayweather-Pacquiao fell apart earlier this year because the two fighters were unable to agree on the cut-off date for the random drug testing. The fight is back on the table and currently being negotiated for a tentative November date.
Until the BALCO lab was raided in 2003, Conte had a four year run of helping major athletes beat the system by taking performance enhancing drugs and then showing them how to avoid detection.
Conte finds Pacquiao's rise in the sport "suspicious" - because of the many weight divisions that he crossed, while keeping his physical strengths, and his infamous ability to train hard for five to six hours a day during training camp. Pacquiao is the first seven division champion in the history of the sport. He began fighting as a teenager at 106-pounds and now campaigns as the WBO welterweight champion.
"At the very least I would say it's highly suspicious," Conte said, "Going up that many weight divisions and not only maintaining but increasing the strength and power. It's just not something you see. Is he possibly just a genetic freak? I guess that's possible, but its certainly highly suspicious."
"Moving up five or six weight classes and becoming faster and more powerful, yet [staying] very lean. Without the use of performance enhancing drugs....just the stories I hear alone about training for five or six hours a day....you just can't do that."
"It's just rumors at this point, but I think there is certainly reason to target test."
