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By Gabriel Montoya
After two fights deemed classics by fight fans and writers around the world, Juan Manuel Marquez is still searching for that clear win over Manny Pacquiao. Though only the knockdowns scored by Pacquiao separate the two men, knowing he came close in scoring a draw the first time and losing a close decision the second is simply not enough for Marquez. So at age 38, four years after their last encounter (the first happened at 126 pounds, the last at 130), Marquez moves up to 144 pounds (a catchweight agreed upon by Pacquiao since Marquez is currently a lightweight) to give it one last go.
“I believe this is the best training camp he has had in his whole career and we are going to give Pacquiao a great fight,” said Marquez’s trainer Nacho Beristain. “Without question, we have prepared ourselves to win this fight again. They can say what they want. They are great trainers and he is a great fighter. If they feel they won the first two fights, so be it – we feel the same way and that’s the way you should go into a fight.”
“That’s why we are doing this third fight,” said Marquez. “The first two were very close and this fight should end all doubt. We are not the only ones saying we won the fights. There are a lot of fans and media out there saying the same thing- that we won those two fights.”
At this stage of their careers, both men’s abilities are clearly defined. Pacquiao has fought a slew of well-matched fights against bigger men past their primes in title-winning affairs, moving on from the last Marquez fight to 135, 140, 147 and finally, a 150 pound catchweight fight with Antonio Margarito. Along the way, as he faced these bigger men, he began to develop his right hand lead style and learned to effectively learned how to use his feet, jab, and right hook. Pacquiao has also proven to be able to take a solid punch at the higher weights.
Marquez went on to become the lightweight champion and defended the title in grueling affairs with Juan Diaz (the first time. A rematch was a shutout win for Marquez) and Michael Katsidis (Marquez would dominate the action but get dropped early on only to stop Katsidis late). Marquez moved up to welterweight to face Floyd Mayweather in a 144-pound catchweight fight. While Mayweather changed the weight the week of the fight to make it a full welterweight fight, the point was a moot. Two weight classes north of his optimum weight, Marquez looked flat, slow and simply ineffective. This time around, Beristain feels it will be different.
“I think Pacquiao has become a better technician as a boxer,” said Beristain. “I think Marquez has become more mature as a fighter and now fights at a higher level and has gotten better. At his age, sometime you wonder if he is focused for the fight but I know that he is – he’s always going to be focused and he’s always going to be ready for a fight. We are looking to give you guys a great fight and he’ll fight like he’s 24. I think Pacquiao’s punches are thrown technically better – he is not as wild as he used to be. He looks like he knows what he is doing and that is a direct impact of Freddie Roach. He is throwing a much better right hook.”
Marquez felt that moving up in weight hurt him but that the style of Mayweather had as much to do with the shutout loss as anything.
“I had problems moving up but I would rather fight Pacquiao three or four more times than fight Mayweather once,” said Marquez. “Mayweather is a defensive fighter – he doesn’t let you fight but we know Pacquiao comes to fight and he is a spectacular fighter. He is always going to give you a fight and that’s why I know it will be a war between us.”
There is no question that when Pacquiao and Marquez step into the ring on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, fireworks will go off. How long it lasts is anyone’s guess. It says here that this is a mismatch at this weight and age and that Marquez will be knocked out cold in eight rounds.
However, there will be one question in the minds of everyone paying attention to the promotion: Why did Marquez employ the services of one Angel Hernandez AKA Angel Heredia? If you don’t know who he is, Heredia was the key witness in the BALCO case as well as the 2003 case against track-and-field coach Trevor Graham, who trained runners Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery among others. Graham anonymously sent a syringe containing an illegal substance developed by BALCO to the United States Anti-Doping Agency. The man Graham had been working with to allegedly get PEDs like EPO, HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and testosterone was Heredia, who would eventually turn state’s evidence on both Graham and BALCO founder Victor Conte.
It is interesting to note, however, that while the case began in 2003 and Heredia gave testimony all through that time, he may have still been dealing illegal substances.
As revealed in an arbitration document from the USADA, Angel “Memo” Heredia testified in a case against Olympic sprinter and coach Raymond Stewart (once coached by Glenn Mills, current coach of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt) in 2010 that he supplied drugs to Stewart and his athletes for a decade.
http://www.usada.org/uploads/6-25-10...ward%20110.pdf
“The arbitrator is comfortably satisfied that Raymond Stewart regularly dealt with ‘Memo,’ an admitted drug supplier to the track and field world in order to secure drugs which were prohibited by WADA, for use by athletes that he coached and trained,” reads the USADA arbitration document.
“The relationship between these men spanned ten years while Stewart held himself out to the world as a coach of track and field at elite levels and all the while he knew he was regularly communicating with a known drug dealer trafficking in performance enhancing drugs,” the document also reads. That period, according to the document, began sometime around 1996.
One question that comes to mind is why was Heredia allegedly dealing PEDs while serving as a key witness in major performance-enhancing drug cases? When did Heredia become an informant? He later told USADA he was dealing PEDs as late as 2006. This was around the same period he was testifying against Graham and Stewart. The BALCO case was in 2003 and according to this article, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1111116309112, the lead prosecutor in the BALCO case, Jeff Novitsky, did not get hold of Heredia until March of 2005. In this regard, someone’s got to provide some answers.
Another question would be, why use Heredia at all? Ignorance of his past was one excuse given.
“I just know that when I met him, his background was with elite athletes,” said Marquez. “We discussed what I needed to do. I didn’t find out anything about this stuff that has been written until the last few days. It was big news to me but it is a shame because of all the work I have done and preparation has been thrown into the trash can by this guy Conte and [Alex] Ariza by saying these things. I worked very hard but I’m not going to stop training for the fight. Whatever testing they want to do- blood or Olympic- I am ready to do it. We’ll do it, no problem, as long as he does it too.”
While Victor Conte, who now works with several top fighters, did time in prison for his involvement in BALCO, he never testified against anyone else, instead owning up to his crime. Heredia became a key witness in several cases. In a documentary on German TV, Heredia demonstrated for the cameras how easy it was to procure EPO (a blood doping agent) in Mexico City and also how to use it. He did this by injecting it into his own stomach. The documentary came out in 2009 and can be seen via the following links
After two fights deemed classics by fight fans and writers around the world, Juan Manuel Marquez is still searching for that clear win over Manny Pacquiao. Though only the knockdowns scored by Pacquiao separate the two men, knowing he came close in scoring a draw the first time and losing a close decision the second is simply not enough for Marquez. So at age 38, four years after their last encounter (the first happened at 126 pounds, the last at 130), Marquez moves up to 144 pounds (a catchweight agreed upon by Pacquiao since Marquez is currently a lightweight) to give it one last go.
“I believe this is the best training camp he has had in his whole career and we are going to give Pacquiao a great fight,” said Marquez’s trainer Nacho Beristain. “Without question, we have prepared ourselves to win this fight again. They can say what they want. They are great trainers and he is a great fighter. If they feel they won the first two fights, so be it – we feel the same way and that’s the way you should go into a fight.”
“That’s why we are doing this third fight,” said Marquez. “The first two were very close and this fight should end all doubt. We are not the only ones saying we won the fights. There are a lot of fans and media out there saying the same thing- that we won those two fights.”
At this stage of their careers, both men’s abilities are clearly defined. Pacquiao has fought a slew of well-matched fights against bigger men past their primes in title-winning affairs, moving on from the last Marquez fight to 135, 140, 147 and finally, a 150 pound catchweight fight with Antonio Margarito. Along the way, as he faced these bigger men, he began to develop his right hand lead style and learned to effectively learned how to use his feet, jab, and right hook. Pacquiao has also proven to be able to take a solid punch at the higher weights.
Marquez went on to become the lightweight champion and defended the title in grueling affairs with Juan Diaz (the first time. A rematch was a shutout win for Marquez) and Michael Katsidis (Marquez would dominate the action but get dropped early on only to stop Katsidis late). Marquez moved up to welterweight to face Floyd Mayweather in a 144-pound catchweight fight. While Mayweather changed the weight the week of the fight to make it a full welterweight fight, the point was a moot. Two weight classes north of his optimum weight, Marquez looked flat, slow and simply ineffective. This time around, Beristain feels it will be different.
“I think Pacquiao has become a better technician as a boxer,” said Beristain. “I think Marquez has become more mature as a fighter and now fights at a higher level and has gotten better. At his age, sometime you wonder if he is focused for the fight but I know that he is – he’s always going to be focused and he’s always going to be ready for a fight. We are looking to give you guys a great fight and he’ll fight like he’s 24. I think Pacquiao’s punches are thrown technically better – he is not as wild as he used to be. He looks like he knows what he is doing and that is a direct impact of Freddie Roach. He is throwing a much better right hook.”
Marquez felt that moving up in weight hurt him but that the style of Mayweather had as much to do with the shutout loss as anything.
“I had problems moving up but I would rather fight Pacquiao three or four more times than fight Mayweather once,” said Marquez. “Mayweather is a defensive fighter – he doesn’t let you fight but we know Pacquiao comes to fight and he is a spectacular fighter. He is always going to give you a fight and that’s why I know it will be a war between us.”
There is no question that when Pacquiao and Marquez step into the ring on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, fireworks will go off. How long it lasts is anyone’s guess. It says here that this is a mismatch at this weight and age and that Marquez will be knocked out cold in eight rounds.
However, there will be one question in the minds of everyone paying attention to the promotion: Why did Marquez employ the services of one Angel Hernandez AKA Angel Heredia? If you don’t know who he is, Heredia was the key witness in the BALCO case as well as the 2003 case against track-and-field coach Trevor Graham, who trained runners Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery among others. Graham anonymously sent a syringe containing an illegal substance developed by BALCO to the United States Anti-Doping Agency. The man Graham had been working with to allegedly get PEDs like EPO, HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and testosterone was Heredia, who would eventually turn state’s evidence on both Graham and BALCO founder Victor Conte.
It is interesting to note, however, that while the case began in 2003 and Heredia gave testimony all through that time, he may have still been dealing illegal substances.
As revealed in an arbitration document from the USADA, Angel “Memo” Heredia testified in a case against Olympic sprinter and coach Raymond Stewart (once coached by Glenn Mills, current coach of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt) in 2010 that he supplied drugs to Stewart and his athletes for a decade.
http://www.usada.org/uploads/6-25-10...ward%20110.pdf
“The arbitrator is comfortably satisfied that Raymond Stewart regularly dealt with ‘Memo,’ an admitted drug supplier to the track and field world in order to secure drugs which were prohibited by WADA, for use by athletes that he coached and trained,” reads the USADA arbitration document.
“The relationship between these men spanned ten years while Stewart held himself out to the world as a coach of track and field at elite levels and all the while he knew he was regularly communicating with a known drug dealer trafficking in performance enhancing drugs,” the document also reads. That period, according to the document, began sometime around 1996.
One question that comes to mind is why was Heredia allegedly dealing PEDs while serving as a key witness in major performance-enhancing drug cases? When did Heredia become an informant? He later told USADA he was dealing PEDs as late as 2006. This was around the same period he was testifying against Graham and Stewart. The BALCO case was in 2003 and according to this article, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1111116309112, the lead prosecutor in the BALCO case, Jeff Novitsky, did not get hold of Heredia until March of 2005. In this regard, someone’s got to provide some answers.
Another question would be, why use Heredia at all? Ignorance of his past was one excuse given.
“I just know that when I met him, his background was with elite athletes,” said Marquez. “We discussed what I needed to do. I didn’t find out anything about this stuff that has been written until the last few days. It was big news to me but it is a shame because of all the work I have done and preparation has been thrown into the trash can by this guy Conte and [Alex] Ariza by saying these things. I worked very hard but I’m not going to stop training for the fight. Whatever testing they want to do- blood or Olympic- I am ready to do it. We’ll do it, no problem, as long as he does it too.”
While Victor Conte, who now works with several top fighters, did time in prison for his involvement in BALCO, he never testified against anyone else, instead owning up to his crime. Heredia became a key witness in several cases. In a documentary on German TV, Heredia demonstrated for the cameras how easy it was to procure EPO (a blood doping agent) in Mexico City and also how to use it. He did this by injecting it into his own stomach. The documentary came out in 2009 and can be seen via the following links
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