Roach defends ‘clean’ Pacquiao

Steve Luckings and Ahmed Rizvi


The trainer of seven-weight world champion Manny Pacquiao has slammed what he called “railroading” tactics by the camp of Floyd Mayweather Jr and insisted in the strongest possible terms that his charge is “clean” after rumours surfaced he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

The message emanating from inside Mayweather’s camp yesterday was that they were prepared to walk away from what could be the richest fight in history unless the Filipino pugilist is prepared to bow to their demands of Olympic-standard drug testing in the weeks leading up to the bout.

“My fighter is clean, I have trouble giving Manny protein shakes and vitamins, let alone steroids,” fumed Roach. “He will pass the drug test, because my fighter is clean. We never flunked a urine test, and there is no reason to think my fighter is dirty.”

Mayweather’s camp claim the “Pac Man” is uneasy about having to have his blood tested within 30 days of a bout because of personal superstitions, while Mayweather’s trainer and father, Floyd Sr, said he suspected after Pacquiao’s last bout, in which he beat Miguel Cotto, that the WBO and IBF middleweight champion was using performance-enhancing drugs to move up weight classes and still retain his devastating speed and power.

However, Roach, who has been in Pacquiao’s corner since he first walked through the doors of his Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles in 2001, dismissed the American’s tactics and accused Mayweather of looking for a way out of the fight.

He defended Pacquiao’s integrity and clean record and said they would abide by the rules of the boxing authorities in the build up to any fight, not the whim of Mayweather, who returned to the ring in September after a 21-month lay-off to defeat the Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez.

“This guy [Mayweather] isn’t going to walk all over us, he’s not railroading us.

This is b*******, we will go by the rules of the commission, and that’s it. We’ll go on to other things, and he can make no money fighting some bum.

“We have passed every test ever given to us. We go by the commission rules, not any rule Mayweather puts out there.”

Boxing fans will hope that the latest spat is simply a case of tit-for-tat in negotiating the finer details of a fight that would easily be the biggest this century, with both fighters estimated to net around US$25 million (Dh91m).

A deal was widely expected to be agreed this week with an official announcement coming early in the new year about a possible March date for the titanic battle.

However, neither fighter has signed a formal contract and there have been disputes between representatives of the two fighters ever since Mayweather’s promoter pulled out at the last minute of a trip to Texas, where Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was to make a proposal to host the bout.

But Mayweather’s promoter, Richard Schaefer, said other issues around the fight are settled and all that is left to be agreed is the blood testing issue.

“The good news is we have agreed on all the other points,” he said. “Depending on what Manny Pacquiao decides to do we either have a fight or we don’t have a fight.”

Should a compromise be reached it will be more than just Pacquiao’s belts on the line. The mythical, and in some quarters, more lauded, pound-for-pound title will also be up for grabs. Opinion is split right down the middle on which fighter holds the folkloric mantle, and unless both can find a way around the latest impasse, it may never be known.

Pacquiao has never failed a post-fight urine test in Nevada, including his last fight when he stopped Cotto. Mayweather has also passed urine tests in the state.

Fighters, though, are not routinely tested before bouts for performance-enhancing drugs, and there are no blood tests done for those drugs.

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