CBS Sports Column: Boxing's bloody mess: Pacquiao meet McGwire
Dec. 27, 2009
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist
Manny Pacquiao is face to face with the most important opponent of his boxing career, and it's not Floyd Mayweather. The opponent is himself. At stake? Nothing much. Only his place in the boxing pantheon. Only his legacy.
This is his Mark McGwire Moment, and Pacquiao must attack it forcefully and bluntly. So far, he has bobbed and weaved. He has slipped the issue. He has refused Mayweather's insistence on Olympic-style drug testing before their 147-pound mega-fight, which was set for March 13 but now appears to be off because Pacquiao won't submit the necessary blood. He says he's superstitious. He says giving blood so close to the fight would weaken him. He says a bunch of gibberish, none of which makes sense, all of which makes him look as guilty as McGwire looked when he hit Capitol Hill and refused to discuss steroids.
Manny Pacquiao has to step up and clear the air ... now. (Getty Images)
"I'm not here to discuss the past," McGwire said in March 2005, and cemented his future. Almost five years have passed, and McGwire is still viewed as a steroid cheat. Three times his name has appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot, and three times he has failed to come close to induction despite having career numbers certainly worthy of Cooperstown, assuming he amassed those numbers legally. Most voters think he did not. Most voters are probably right, given his cartoonishly muscled body, his historical power and his evasion on Capitol Hill on March 17, 2005.
Now it is Manny Pacquiao's turn. He has come to his own version of Capitol Hill, and he has chosen to walk the path of Mark McGwire and avoid the issue entirely. He's not here to talk about the past, or about blood testing -- and like McGwire, Manny Pacquiao thinks that should be good enough.
It's not. It's not close to good enough. Fair or not, illegal performance enhancement is the new witch hunt, the new red scare. In the 17th century, if you were accused of being a witch, you were a witch unless you could prove otherwise. How could you prove otherwise? Well, you could be thrown off a cliff or burned at the stake. If you survived, then obviously you were a witch. And if you died? Well ... oops. But on the bright side, the fatal fall or fire cleansed your reputation.
In the 1950s, when this country's fear of communism was stoked by a madman named Joseph McCarthy, the accusation of being a communist was the same thing as being a communist. If you were accused of it, you were it, until you proved otherwise. How could you prove otherwise? Well, you couldn't. Many victims of McCarthyism went to prison. At least one committed suicide. After a few years of nonsense, the hysteria died down, and McCarthy's influence subsided. And then, mercifully, he died at age 48 in 1957.
Now the onus is on Pacquiao. Like so many who came before him -- McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, cyclists and sprinters and body builders -- he is guilty until proven innocent. But this is different from the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy's reign of terror, because the solution is simple:
Do the blood test.
Pacquiao's supporters say he will do the blood test, but they are right only up to a point. They refuse to see beyond that point, because that's what supporters do: They see what they want to see. And Pacquiao fans see this: They see Pacquiao as being accommodating -- willing to submit to a urine test whenever it is asked, and even willing to submit to a blood test months before the fight, or shortly after the fight.
Pacquiao fans ignore this glaring truth, that their hero is not willing to give blood in the weeks leading up to the fight.
When the HGH would still be in his system.
That's what I see. I see Pacquiao avoiding the blood test. He says giving blood so soon before a fight would weaken him, but that's nonsense. He wouldn't be donating blood, for God's sake. He'd be giving a sample. A smidgen. A negligible amount.
And let's be honest about this: There is reason to believe Pacquiao could be -- not is, but could be -- aided by HGH. He is fighting at 40 pounds above his debut weight, and he is better than ever. That goes against a century of boxing history, which has shown that fighters tend to get less effective as they rise in weight for two reasons: They lose power as they stray from their original weight class, and the accumulation of boxing's abuse begins to erode their skills.
Not Pacquiao. The bigger he gets, the older he gets (he's 31), the better he gets. He was 39-3-2 with 30 knockouts in 44 fights at weights ranging from 106 to 129½ pounds. In his past 11 fights, most of them over 130 pounds and some of them into the 140s, he is 11-0 with eight knockouts, and he has done that against some of the world's best fighters in those classes. It makes no sense, and when it comes to the search for performance-enhancing cheats, that is the biggest red flag of all:
It makes no sense.
Until now, Pacquiao has somehow gotten bigger and better and yet he has avoided being linked to drugs. Why? Because boxing isn't a major media sport, and I say that as an amateur boxer myself. I love the sport, but it doesn't get the scrutiny of baseball or even of track or cycling, and so Pacquiao's unusual rise in size and performance has passed under the radar -- until now. Mayweather wants Pacquiao to prove his cleanliness by submitting a small amount of blood before their fight, and it is not an unreasonable request. Olympic fighters do it. But not Manny Pacquiao?
Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum, says Pacquiao will fight someone else in March. Pacquiao says he will sue Mayweather, and others, for slander. They think life will go on, and I am here to tell them, it will not.
Pacquiao is now linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Right or wrong, there it is -- and it won't go away. He can make like Mark McGwire and avoid the issue, and while his biggest fans will continue to believe in him, the rest of us will not forget.
And when the time comes to assess his legacy, we will burn him at the stake.
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