Floyd Mayweather made the first of his media rounds today, giving interviews with several major news companies, and a lot of the questions were directed toward his thoughts on Manny Pacquiao and the drug testing debacle.
To some reporters he was keeping quiet about Manny Pacquiao and a future fight, although to others he reiterated his previous stance of wanting to clean up the sport. Ergo that Pacquiao would have to take extra testing should the pair ever meet in the ring, and that if not, the fight probably won't ever happen.
On the other side of things both Roach and Pacquiao are sure that the fight will still happen after Clottey and Mosley respectively are taken care of. Far from being an issue of which side will back down first though, this game of promotional chicken won't have any winner, and keeping up their sides of the argument has now become a matter of pride for each boxer.
Dennis Valentine, Reading PA: "Neither camp will back down but both think the fight will still happen, what's going on here behind the scenes?"
Either they know something we all don't though, (maybe they plan to concede to the extra testing, or perhaps it was all a ruse cooked up by Golden Boy and Top Rank) or they are being hopelessly optimistic. Speaking to one reporter today Mayweather even said that extra testing should be prevalent in all sports, not just boxing, which is setting the bar a little high when most of his opponents aren't happy with it.
Mayweather's friend in cleaning up the sport?
As usual though, there is more than meets the eye with his latest statements, as several eagle eyed fans picked up on.
Tyrone Smith, Erie PA: "Floyd knows there are so many fighters cheating because he's one of them. Nevada needs to ban Xylocaine and leave fraudweather with no place to hide"
Phil Benton, Pittsburgh: In response to the Sky Sports interview, how can Mayweather clean up the sport when he takes a banned substance himself?
I would like to find that out myself Phil, but none of the interviews I have seen so far are asking the question. Sure he can talk about cleaning up the sport as much as he likes, but so long as he refuses to leave Las Vegas to take advantage of Nevada's lax laws on Xylocaine, its difficult for most to take his calls to clean up the sport seriously.
More than that though it also makes it look like he really was just looking for an excuse to get out of the Pacquiao fight rather than wanting the testing done out of genuine concern that Pacquiao was cheating himself.
Mar, Email: "If Pacquiao-*ayweather fight happens with the random blood test, what will NSAC do? Who'll administer the blood tests? Could it be possible that the two testing agencies will do their own testing too? Will the NSAC step down or relegate their authority to USADA to give way for the latter?"
The entire issue of the extra testing seems to suggest that there would have to be two sets of tests, and that the NSAC tests would be separate to the USADA. The interesting thing would be what would happen if a fighter was caught on something by the USADA but tested clean on the NSAC tests.
Would the NSAC honor the results of the USADA? Secondarily could they legally even punish a fighter for tests which they didn't do themselves which the fight reaquired?
I would think that the fight could be called off for breach of the fight agreement by the other party, but that the NSAC couldn't do anything to punish the fighter after the event happened. After all if they start to recognize testing done by other agencies then it undermines their own testing and invites corruption, not to mention different standards for different fights depending on who was doing the testing.
Reforming the testing laws is something that the boxing commissions need to do, although not the the degree Mayweather insists. Random urine and heir testing are more than adequate in most cases, and there are things which even blood tests can't catch. The important point though is that these must be made internally as a requirement of the commissions rather than individual fighters asking for more or less testing when the mood takes them, particularly with involving outside agencies to do the testing.
Source: examiner.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment