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Mayweather: “Pacquiao didn’t want to take a $25 million dollar drug test”
Mayweather: “Pacquiao didn’t want to take a $25 million dollar drug test”
February 8th, 2010
By William Mackay
In an interview at Sportsradiointerviews, undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. commented on why he thinks his March 13th mega fight with Manny Pacquiao went down the drains. Mayweather says “Manny Pacquiao didn’t want to take a 25 million dollar drug test. I had a clause that I wanted and he [Pacquiao] had a clause that he wanted. His clause, what he wanted, was every pound that I weighed over 147, they wanted me to pay ten million dollars. I said no problem, each pound I’ll pay ten million dollars, my clause for him was for us both to take random blood tests. The only thing that I’m trying to do is clean up the sports period.”
Mayweather has a point here. He did agree to Pacquiao’s part of the contract for the ten million dollar penalty. This is something that would have likely hurt Mayweather much more than Pacquiao, because Floyd is the bigger fighter and he had recently come in over the welterweight limit for his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez in September of 2009. Pacquiao and his team didn’t like Mayweather calling the shots with the random blood testing for a variety of reasons, one of them being that the blood testing wasn’t something that was checked by the Nevada Athletic Commission for boxing fights in the state.
Mayweather was in effect asking for something that’s not even required in the state of Nevada for fights. However, it was Mayweather’s request in the contract and something that the two could negotiate over. If Pacquiao didn’t want to take the random blood tests, then the fight was a no go.
As it was, Pacquiao eventually agreed to take the random blood tests up to a point, asking for them to be stopped 24 days before the fight. By having the tests stop 24 days before the fight, you couldn’t really consider this being random drug testing by definition since Pacquiao and his team wanted limits to the testing. It was then up to Mayweather to agree to this or not.
Mayweather says “He [Pacquiao] asked me to do one thing [talking about the ten million dollar per pound weight penalty in the contract] and I asked him to do another thing. The thing is this: a fighter before asked me ‘Floyd, if you weight this much over will you pay?’ I said yes. We’ve done it in the past. Simple as that. I asked him to do one thing. He had something that he wanted me to do and I had something that I wanted him to do. He didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. I lived up to my end of the bargain.”
In fairness to Pacquiao, the blood testing was a really tricky thing for him and not as easy as it might seem. Pacquiao believes that he is weakened when he has blood taken from his body, even small amounts of blood like the kind used for the random blood testing. This is why Pacquiao didn’t want to take the blood tests anywhere close to the fight, because it would give Mayweather an extra edge.
February 8th, 2010
By William Mackay
In an interview at Sportsradiointerviews, undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. commented on why he thinks his March 13th mega fight with Manny Pacquiao went down the drains. Mayweather says “Manny Pacquiao didn’t want to take a 25 million dollar drug test. I had a clause that I wanted and he [Pacquiao] had a clause that he wanted. His clause, what he wanted, was every pound that I weighed over 147, they wanted me to pay ten million dollars. I said no problem, each pound I’ll pay ten million dollars, my clause for him was for us both to take random blood tests. The only thing that I’m trying to do is clean up the sports period.”
Mayweather has a point here. He did agree to Pacquiao’s part of the contract for the ten million dollar penalty. This is something that would have likely hurt Mayweather much more than Pacquiao, because Floyd is the bigger fighter and he had recently come in over the welterweight limit for his last fight against Juan Manuel Marquez in September of 2009. Pacquiao and his team didn’t like Mayweather calling the shots with the random blood testing for a variety of reasons, one of them being that the blood testing wasn’t something that was checked by the Nevada Athletic Commission for boxing fights in the state.
Mayweather was in effect asking for something that’s not even required in the state of Nevada for fights. However, it was Mayweather’s request in the contract and something that the two could negotiate over. If Pacquiao didn’t want to take the random blood tests, then the fight was a no go.
As it was, Pacquiao eventually agreed to take the random blood tests up to a point, asking for them to be stopped 24 days before the fight. By having the tests stop 24 days before the fight, you couldn’t really consider this being random drug testing by definition since Pacquiao and his team wanted limits to the testing. It was then up to Mayweather to agree to this or not.
Mayweather says “He [Pacquiao] asked me to do one thing [talking about the ten million dollar per pound weight penalty in the contract] and I asked him to do another thing. The thing is this: a fighter before asked me ‘Floyd, if you weight this much over will you pay?’ I said yes. We’ve done it in the past. Simple as that. I asked him to do one thing. He had something that he wanted me to do and I had something that I wanted him to do. He didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. I lived up to my end of the bargain.”
In fairness to Pacquiao, the blood testing was a really tricky thing for him and not as easy as it might seem. Pacquiao believes that he is weakened when he has blood taken from his body, even small amounts of blood like the kind used for the random blood testing. This is why Pacquiao didn’t want to take the blood tests anywhere close to the fight, because it would give Mayweather an extra edge.
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