Manny Pacquiao and the “Something to Hide” Fallacy

By Steve Lewis: We still hear it, and once again, Roger Mayweather has gone on the air and lost more credibility when he told the folks at the Boxing Truth Radio Show that Manny Pacquiao was on “A-side meth,” a drug that apparently makes people literally bulletproof, according to the genius that is Roger Mayweather. And Roger’s often-repeated mantra, which a lot of Pacquiao detractors have bought into, was: If you have nothing to hide, why not take the test? So that has apparently become the lazy and easy $40M question. And the Pacquiao detractors will say it again. “Manny must have something to hide if he’s willing to blow off $40M due to a simple blood test.” The fallacy in that thought is that there is nothing to hide. People think if the blood test would be taken, Pacquiao would be caught red-handed. But as these same detractors would argue, you are not going to catch anything because a person can conceivably flush out and cycle off the drugs out of the system within a couple of days. What they probably meant was that Pacquiao does not want to take the Olympic-style drug testing because he won’t be able to shoot up any PEDs during the upcoming training, not that he’s trying to hide something that’s currently in his system. So it is a misstatement to say and argue that Pacquiao has something to hide. It is more accurate to say that he does not want any nefarious plans of his being foiled (future tense, folks, not present tense). But even then, to say that Pacquiao’s refusal to be blood-tested is because Olympic-style testing would prevent him from carrying out his plans of shooting up is ludicrous. Seriously, do you really think that someone who has built such a reputation in and out of the ring would still chance playing around with PEDs in light of the intense scrutiny and spotlight being placed on this blood testing issue? Pacquiao would be foolish to even attempt it, given the attention on this matter. It would be one thing is this was an up and coming hungry fighter with nothing to lose, who hasn’t yet received the fat paycheck. But this is Manny Pacquiao: well-documented humanitarian, aspiring politician, and among the most revered athletes in the world – one who is already well compensated and is not in financial straits. There is no need for Pacquiao to do so, particularly against Floyd Mayweather, who is not noted as being a power puncher. Resorting to PEDs to defend against Mayweather’s “pitty-pats” and “peck-and-run” tactics would be highly unnecessary. If there was any grain of truth to what Roger Mayweather and the rest of his cohorts are saying, you would see a whole lot more boxers from the Philippines taking advantage of this so-called “A-side meth.” Heck, Bobby Pacquiao would be in the top 10 pound-for-pound rankings if he could make himself “bulletproof” like brother Manny. Instead, he is relegated to just being “Manny’s brother.”