Articles of 2009

1949-The Perfect Storm Of Pugilism

Published

16 years ago

March 10, 2009

Images appear like electric ghosts when the knob is pulled on the Philco console. Eventually white letters shimmy on the television screen -“Gillette Cavalcade of Sports”- and a ringside bell clangs. Friends and neighbors crowd the living room and jockey to get near the 10 inch screen.

It’s 1949.

Jimmy Powers opens the show with a trusty bellow: “Friday night fights are on the air!”

This was the time when boxing was second only to baseball in the affections of the American public. Those lucky enough to have a television set watched sluggers like Joe DiMaggio put wood to cork and cowhide; but NBC had a line-up of sluggers who put cowhide to flesh and bone. The airwaves were saturated with the Sweet Science, and it seemed as if everyone had a sweet tooth. Today we have anonymous legions with Mickey Mouse titles. “Belt-holders” we call them; but back then there were eight World Champions demonstrating their fighting prowess for a nation still celebrating its own after World War II. Eight World Champions. And your aunt could have rattled off the names of half of them. The ring was as uncomplicated as postwar America wished it was and yet was as integrated as a good cup of coffee. Champions, contenders, and a few journeymen of every shade had a chance to become household names and make a decent living: Rocky Castellani, Art Aragon, and Tiger Jones, known then and basically forgotten now, could be poster boys for diversity.

Sure, even during its golden eras boxing was a sport familiar with the sly, slick, and wicked –criminal elements have owned or influenced managers, officials, and individual fighters themselves. No honest fan would hold that boxing is among the purest of professions. Its critics, however, have more elemental problems with boxing –the very idea of it is offensive- and so it has been a punching bag since Cain put Abel down for the count. Some simply cannot see past violence and shrink from what boxing means and represents. It’s a wonder that they can muster up the testosterone to throw their shots in word or in print. We should be gentle with them because they know not what they’re talking about. Their eyes are untrained. They miss the greater part of it… and they don’t know ring history.

Boxing, for all of its faults, has presaged much that its critics celebrate today. Joe Louis got the thumbs-up from white America long before Barack Obama was born –and he did so with two numbers-runners out of Chicago and Detroit, not a PR machine juiced with millions in campaign contributions. Boxing also was and remains a source of great ethnic pride. It is multiculturalism magnified. Those who arrived on these shores throughout the twentieth century had their share of two-fisted folk heroes: Irish, Italian, Asian, and Hispanic immigrants to name a few. Jews who settled in places like Brownsville, NY saw their great traditions vicariously defended in the ring by their children when Nazi Germany began Ha Shoah. They took solace in knowing that Hitler’s jaw would become his hat had Al “Bummy” Davis (nee Albert Abraham Davidoff) landed a left hook.

When America had its back on the ropes during the years of the Great Depression (1929 ~1939), fight clubs were scattered like seeds in every city. Waiting in the gym was a who’s who of flat-nosed wise men ready to cultivate contenders. Ray Arcel, Whitey Bimstein, Freddie Brown, Charley Goldman, Mannie Seamon, Chickie Ferrera, Nick and Dan Florio were all active in New York City alone. Most eventually wound up at the legendary Stillman’s Gym on West 54th Street. Trainers like these cultivated a special crop of Americans not seen since. The dirty-faced novices who walked the block to a boxing gym as newspapers blew by like tumbleweeds kept both fists deep in their pockets. In the 1930s, these kids believed that those commodities –eight knuckles- were all that could keep poverty at bay. Some came because they had talent tried on street corners. Others came because there was nowhere else to go. Some came because they couldn’t sing or dance but wanted similar glory, others because their race or ethnicity offered them few other options.

…However they came, they came, and the gyms swelled. And the heavy bags heaved and the small bags danced. Ropes skipped and whipped with rhythm and whimsy. Sparring mates honed their punches on blood-spattered canvases. The concrete classrooms were drafty and hard on the nose, but it was here that countering jabs and slipping rights were taught by rote, where mistakes meant broken lips, where progress was quite literally determined by pressure. Over the next 10 years, they learned their lessons well. Growling stomachs had made them lions.

What does all of this mean? It means that a conflux of rare factors and events spawned greatness in the ring. The popularity of boxing, the glut of gyms and clubs, the presence of many A-list trainers to develop fighters, the sheer depth of the pool of potential and their familiarity with hardship –all combined to create a “perfect storm” of pugilism. The result? The fighters of the 1940s can rightly claim to be boxing’s “Greatest Generation”. What’s more, when the caliber of fighters and fights on record are fully considered, we can get even more specific and assert that 1949 was the best year that boxing has seen in the modern era.

Turn on that Philco television in your head. If you’re old enough, rewind the tapes of your memories, if you’re a whippersnapper like me, then shut up, sit back, and witness how great boxing was in that shining year.

1. The Nonpareil. Sugar Ray Robinson is the consensus pick as the greatest fighter who ever lived. If your protestations cause you to chant the name of Ali, know that Ali himself agrees with the consensus pick. If you don’t believe it, just email me and I’ll send you a complimentary clip. In 1949, the 28-year-old welterweight King fought 13 times. In July, Robinson (95-1-2) defeated Kid Gavilan, 23, a second time in Philadelphia –coming on strong after getting cut over his right eye in the fourth. Considering the fistic genius of the Cuban Hawk, this may have been Robinson’s greatest victory. For his part, Gavilan fought 10 times that year and defeated Rocky Castellani, Beau Jack, and the formidable though faded Ike Williams twice.

2. The Rising Bull. By the late 1940s, Jake LaMotta had already fought Robinson five times and managed to hand him his first loss. In June of 1949 he took the World Middleweight Title from the great French champion Marcel Cerdan in his career-best performance. Tragically, it was Cerdan’s last fight. He would die on October 27 while flying over the Azores on his way back to the U.S. for the rematch. Purists like me still wish he took a boat.

3. I Ragazzi Duri. Newcomers Joey Giardello in Philadelphia, Tony DeMarco of Boston and Rocky Marciano of Brockton, MA were fighting more than Italian newlyweds. Sicilian Charley Fusari, a 7-5 underdog, managed to beat the up-and-coming Castellani, and was looking good against Rocky Graziano until going down in round 10 and getting up to see 2 more Rockys and too much leather. Johnny Saxton was managed by the guys in the sharkskin suits. Carmen Basilio had shark-repellant. Both began their careers in ’49. In his first year, Basilio fought 15 times to start things off with a bang and a butt or two. (Basilio defended the World Welterweight Title against Saxton seven years in and the sharks behind Saxton ensured a spurious decision. It was only a six month loan. Basilio stopped him to take his title back and then again six months after that to add an exclamation point.)

4. The Warhorses. Meanwhile Fritzie Zivic, Sammy “The Clutch” Angott, and Lew “The Living Death” Jenkins were all winding down in 1949. Take a look at their records and see why boxing purists giggle when they here modern fighters like Floyd “Money” Mayweather touting their greatness after 39 measly fights. Zivic and Angott had 39 fights when they were 21 and 22 years old respectively. Angott had another 91 and Zivic 142 before they hung up the gloves. Lew Jenkins fought a total of 121 times, including 19 times in his last year (albeit so inebriated half the time he couldn’t see through a ladder).

5. The Mongoose and Murderer’s Row. Archie Moore wasn’t even old yet in 1949. He was near-prime and proved it by stopping Jimmy Bivins, Bob Satterfield, and a formidable five fight rival in Harold Johnson. Johnson regrouped and went on to defeat Bivins and Bert Lytell -one of the remnants of the fearsome sextet called “Murderer’s Row”. The others, Lloyd Marshall and Aaron Wade were also winding down by this time while Eddie Booker and Jack Chase had retired. The greatest among the six was still active (and still avoided) in 1949: Charley Burley. Uneasy laid the crowns of champions in three divisions when these men were campaigning. To his everlasting credit, Archie Moore fought all six of them, posting losses to four. He went down a total of 20 times when he faced the killers on Murderer’s Row. According to Harry Otty, Archie admitted that Burley was the best and Eddie Booker was the second best fighter he faced –no small compliments from a man who fought 161 professionals. Incidentally, Ray Robinson and Henry Armstrong both ducked Charley Burley. That’s a fact.

6. The Cobra. The only real bête noire that Burley had was the Cincinnati Cobra, Ezzard Charles. Ezzard beat him twice at only twenty years old and he did it in Burley’s backyard of Pittsburgh, PA. Only recently recognized as an elite, all-time great, Ezzard conquered several notable middleweights and cleaned out the light heavyweights before stepping up and fighting the big boys. In 1949, he defeated Joey Maxim, stopped Gus Lesnevich and Pat Valentino, and took the Heavyweight Title with a unanimous decision over the shifty Jersey Joe Walcott.

7. The Two Kings. Joe Louis became the World Heavyweight Champion on Tuesday, June 22, 1937. He relinquished the title on Tuesday, March 1, 1949. He was king for 11 years, 8 months and 7 days. It remains an unbroken record. On the other end of the scales and incidentally on the same date, Bantamweight Manuel Ortiz defeated Dado Marino during his second reign as champion. Ortiz stands at the leg of Louis but holds his own record among bantamweights for most defenses (15) of the World Title.

8. The Crown Jewel of 1949. In October of 1948, Sandy Saddler challenged Gugliermo Papaleo, known to us as Willie “Will o’ the Wisp” Pep, for the World Featherweight Title. Saddler shocked everyone at Madison Square Garden by knocking the champion cold in four rounds and lifting the only thing about Pep that wasn’t illusory: his crown. This began a four fight rivalry although Saddler would, by series end, stop him twice more. Context is important here. Only two years earlier, Pep was in a plane crash that should have killed him like Cerdan. He was not the same fighter after that near-tragedy. Sandy, underrated still, is one of the most formidable featherweights who ever lived –standing at 5’8, and 124 lbs. He looked like an atomically mutated insect from those monster movies of the next decade; and with an eventual 103 KOs on his record, Saddler’s shots could sandbag the hardiest of foes.

Pep was a savant. Where most fighters are trained to see and respond to their opponent’s punches without thinking, Pep took it to a new level. He could predict what his opponent was going to do seemingly before the opponent knew, and react accordingly with laser accuracy. At times it looked like magic –Pep would set traps and invite particular shots that he wanted to counter. His opponent would comply and get socked from several angles. Pep may have been the ring’s greatest mentalist. But he had a contemporary who was at least as good –Archie Moore. Perhaps his mistake was a social one. Perhaps Willie should have become better friends with Archie than Sandy was, because Sandy called Archie and Archie gave Sandy answers to Pep’s in-the-ring riddles…as if Sandy’s ferocity, size, and power weren’t enough already.

I’ll be the first to admit that Willie Pep had no business ever beating Sandy Saddler. But he did… at Madison Square Garden on February 11. Pep stepped into the ring with a record of 136-2-1. Saddler was 91-6-2. In a 15 round display of boxing brilliance that has probably never been equaled, Pep reclaimed his seat on the throne. It was his greatest victory. The seat wasn’t warm -it was scorching. Sandy Saddler was a force of nature. “I’ll remember him as long as I live,” Pep said years later, still shuddering.

By my count, five of the ten greatest ring generals of all time were at or near prime exactly sixty years ago. That’s Robinson, Moore, Burley, Charles, and Pep. And they were doing what fighters are called by their fans to do –fight often and fight hard. Indeed, what Pierce Egan called The Sweet Science of Bruising has often approached the sublime, and it was always a serious endeavor for serious men. It was never more serious than it was in 1949 –the year of pugilism’s “perfect storm”.

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Springs Toledo

Articles of 2009

UFC 108 Rashad Evans vs. Thiago Silva

Published

15 years ago

December 31, 2009

David A. Avila

Former champion Rashad Evans meets Brazil’s venerable Thiago Silva in a non-title belt that can lead to a return match with the current champ, but first things first.

Evans (15-1-1) and Silva (14-1) meet in Ultimate Fighting Championship 108 in a light heavyweight bout on Saturday Jan. 2, at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. A win by either fighter could result in a world title bid. The fight card is being shown on pay-per-view television.

Events can change quickly in the Octagon and anybody can beat anybody in the 205-pound weight division. Just ask Silva or Evans.

Silva and Evans are both experienced and can vouch firsthand about the capriciousness of fighting in MMA and especially as a light heavyweight. On one day this man can beat that man and on another day, that man can beat this man. It can make you absolutely daffy.

Evans, 30, is the former UFC light heavyweight world champion who only defended his title on one occasion and lost by vicious knockout to current champion Lyoto Machida of Brazil. It’s the only defeat on his record.

Silva, 27, is a well-rounded MMA fighter from Sao Paolo, Brazil who is versed in jujitsu, Muy Thai and boxing. He can end a fight quickly in a choke hold just as easily as with a kick or a punch. His only loss came to who else: Machida.

Evans and Silva know a win can push open the door to a rematch with current UFC light heavyweight champion Machida.

“A win against Rashad would put me in the track against Lyoto,” said Silva, in a telephone conference call. “That's what – what I want to do.”

When Silva fought Machida the two Brazilians were both undefeated and feared in the MMA world. The fight took place in Las Vegas and with one second remaining in the first round a perfectly timed punch knocked Silva unconscious.

“I was humbled big time, man,” says Silva who fought Machida in January 2009. “I learned a lot from that fight. I think I can correct the mistakes from that fight, not overlooking anything else right now, but just I want to get the chance to fight him again.”

For Evans it was a different circumstance. The upstate New Yorker held the UFC title and was defending it after stopping then champion Forrest Griffin by knockout. Still, many felt Machida was far too technically versed. Evans was stopped brutally in the second round.

“I've made it a point to not – to not get distracted on what I want to do, because you know Thiago (Silva) is a very hungry fighter,” said Evans who has not fought since losing the title to Machida last May. “My focus is just on Thiago so much. You know I don't want to overlook him, you know, not even a little bit.”

Dana White, president of UFC, says the winner of this fight could conceivably fight Machida in the near future. Evans and especially Silva are motivated by the open window.

“I learned a lot from that fight. I think I can correct the mistakes from that fight,” says Silva. “Not overlooking anything else right now, but I just want to get the chance to fight him again.”

What a prize. The winner gets to face the man who beat him: Machida.

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Articles of 2009

No One Is Leaving This Stage Of Negotiations Looking GOLDEN

Published

15 years ago

December 30, 2009

George Kimball

Early in his political career, the young Lyndon Baines Johnson served as a congressional aide to Rep. Richard Kleberg, the wealthy owner of the King Ranch who was elected to seven consecutive terms in the House of Representatives, at least in part because he often ran unopposed.

One year an upstart rival politician we'll call Joe Bob had the temerity to challenge Kleberg in the Democratic primary, resulting in the convocation of the Texas congressman's staff to plot an election strategy. Several ideas were kicked around before Kleberg himself came up with a brainstorm.

“Why don't we start a rumor that he [copulates with] sheep?” proposed the politician.

This was a bit over the top, even for Lyndon Johnson. The future president leapt to his feet and said, incredulously, “But you know Joe Bob don't [copulate with] sheep!”

“Yeah,” replied the congressman, “but watch what happens when the son of a bitch has to stand up and deny it!”

******

Events of the past week or two have seen the Floyd Mayweather camp adopt a similar tactic with regard to Manny Pacquiao. But if introducing what would appear to be a red-herring issue — the debate over drug-testing procedures — to the negotiating process was intended as a negotiating ploy, it would appear for the moment to have backfired. The idea might have been to force Pacquiao to go on the defensive, but Pac-Man instead responded with his stock in trade, the counterpunch — in this case the multi-million dollar defamation suit he filed against the Mayweathers, pere et fils,, with the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

In boxing even more than in life, you never say never, but you'd have to say that Pacquiao-Mayweather is a dead issue right now, at least in its March 13 incarnation. Bob Arum says Pacquiao is prepared to move along to another opponent, and Mayweather is supposedly looking at Matthew Hatton in England.

We'll believe that when we see it, for at least three reasons: (1) There would hardly seem to be enough money in that one to make it worth Floyd's time, (2) He's going to have to put so much into preparing a defense to this lawsuit that he mightn't have time to train and (3) He'd get a better workout if he stayed in Vegas and boxed one of Uncle Roger's girl opponents.

*****

Colleagues on this site have already done a good job of dissecting this process. Ron Borges is absolutely correct in noting that in the midst of all the posturing that's gone on, you'd be a fool to accept at face value anything coming out of any of the parties' mouths. And Frank Lotierzo is spot on in noting that if you had absolutely no desire to actually get in the ring with Manny Pacquiao but were still looking to save face, you'd do pretty much exactly what Mayweather has done. Which is to say, talk tough while you get others to run interference with a series of actions seemingly calculated to ensure that the fight doesn't come off.

But left almost unscathed in all of this heretofore has been the convoluted role played by Golden Boy — by CEO Richard Schaefer, by the company's namesake Oscar the Blogger, GBP's subsidiary enterprise, The Ring, and at least a few of the lap-dogs and lackeys whose favor GPB has cultivated elsewhere in the media.

In late March of 2008, Shane Mosley and Zab Judah appeared at a New York press conference to announce a fight between them in Las Vegas two months later. As it happened, the BALCO trial had gotten underway out in California that week. That day I sat with Judah and his attorney Richard Shinefield as they explained that they intended to ask that both boxers agree to blood testing in the runup to the fight. Citing Mosley's history with BALCO and its products The Cream and The Clear (which Shane claimed Victor Conte had slipped him when he wasn't looking), Shinefield and Zab, noting that Nevada drug tests were limited to urinalysis, proposed that the supplementary tests be administered by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Want to know what Richard Schaefer's response to that was?

“Whatever tests [the NSAC] wants them to take, we will submit to, but we are not going to do other tests than the Nevada commission requires,” said Schaefer. “The fact is, Shane is not a cheater and he does not need to be treated like one.”

But the fact is that Mosley had a confirmed history as a cheater. Manny Pacquiao does not. Yet in the absence of a scintilla of evidence or probable cause, less than two years later Schaefer was howling that the very integrity of the sport would be at risk unless Pacquiao submitted to precisely the same sort of testing he had rejected for Mosley.

And you thought it was Arum who was famous for saying “Yeah, but yesterday I was lying. Today I'm telling the truth!”

Schaefer, by the way, defended his 180-degree turnabout by saying he is now better educated on the issue. He couldn't resist aiming a harpoon at the media by adding that many sportswriters “don't know the difference between blood and urine testing.”

Don't know how to break this to you, Richard, but sportswriters, who have had to deal with this stuff for the past twenty years, probably know more about drug-testing procedures than any other group you could name.

*****

Now, the reasonable assumption would be that by assuming the role of the point man in this unseemly mess, Schaefer was insulating his boss (De La Hoya) and his fighter (PBF) by keeping their fingerprints off it while he made a fool of himself publicly conducting this snide little campaign.

And yes, Money would have stayed out of the line of fire had not a two-month old, expletive-filled rant in which he described the Philippines as the world's foremost producer of performance-enhancing drugs not exploded on the internet at the most inopportune moment. That the lawsuit was filed less than 24 hours after “Floyd Meets the Rugged Man” overtook the Tiger Watch probably wasn't a coincidence.

And we're assuming that this Dan Petrocelli, the lawyer who filed Pacquiao's suit, knows what he's doing, because if there were an even one-zillionth chance that somebody could credibly link Manny to PEDs, then it was a pretty dumb thing to do. You could ask Roger Clemens about that. Clemens' transformation from Hall of Famer-in-waiting to nationwide laughingstock didn't come from the Mitchell Report. It came from his wrongheaded decision to file a lawsuit against Brian McNamee, which in turn threw everything open to the discovery process.

*****

De La Hoya, in the meantime, was playing both sides of the fence. He let Schaefer play Bad Cop as he distanced himself from the negotiating process, but simultaneously was sniping away at Pacquiao from his First Amendment-protected perch as a Ring.com blogger.

“If Pacquiao, the toughest guy on the planet, is afraid of needles and having a few tablespoons of blood drawn from his system, then something is wrong… I'm just saying that now people have to wonder: 'Why doesn't he want to do this?' Why is [blood testing] such a big deal?' wrote Oscar the Blogger. “A lot of eyebrows have been raised. And this is not good.”

Ask yourself this: Exactly what caused those eyebrows to be raised, other than the innuendo coming straight from Oscar's company?

Providing De La Hoya with a forum from which to dispense propaganda only begins to illustrate the hopelessly compromised position from which The Ring continues to operate. They might as well give Schaefer a column, too, while they're at it.

Nearly seven months have elapsed since we last visited the Ring/Golden Boy relationship, and at the risk of winding Nigel up, it might be useful here to note that in the midst of last June's discourse, The Ring's editor offered a laundry list of the magazine's covers since the De La Hoya takeover as a demonstration of Golden Boy's restraint.

After listing them, Nigel Collins wrote “that's 28 covers over the course of 21 issues, of which Top Rank had 12 fighters, as opposed to eight for Golden Boy and eight for other promotional entities. Obviously, The Ring has shown no bias to Golden Boy when it comes to magazine covers.”

It had never even been suggested that the conflict of interest extended to the magazine playing favorites in choosing its cover subjects, but since Nigel brought it up it is probably worth noting now that of those eight covers given over to “other promotional entities,” two were of David Haye, whose promoter was properly listed as “Hayemaker,” but who had also signed a promotional deal with Golden Boy in May of 2008. (Just last month GBP issued a release in De La Hoya's name in which it described itself as “Golden Boy Promotions, the United States promoter of World Boxing Association Heavyweight World Champion David Haye.”)

And even more to the point, in four other issues Nigel Collins offered in evidence the cover subject was Floyd Mayweather (Independent), although what has transpired with regard to the Pacquiao fight doesn't make Money look very independent at all, does it?

We don't regularly keep track of these things, but in making sure we didn't misquote Oscar's Blog we also came across a representation of the January 2010 issue on The Ring's website. The picture on the cover of the Bible of Boxing is of the Golden Boy himself, and the cover story “De La Hoya: The Retirement Interview.”

Wow! Now there's a hot topic for crusading journalists.

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Articles of 2009

Paul Malignaggi Explains Why He Thinks Manny Has Used PEDs

Published

15 years ago

December 30, 2009

Michael Woods

In theory and in practice I am vehemently opposed to people tossing out unfounded allegations against someone. Supply evidence, then we can talk. But saying someone is using steroids, or EPO, or HGH, based on a theory, or your gut instinct….I have to consider, what if the allegation were thrown at me, and I was 100% innocent. I'd be mightily irked. And so too would you be.

Manny Pacquaio has been hammered from all sides with folks insinuating and coming right out with the contention that they think he's been cheating, that he's been using illegal performance enhancers to give him an edge in competition. Floyd Mayweather Sr, Paulie Malignaggi, Miguel Cotto and Kermit Cintron have either accused Manny, or insinuated that he's been using PEDs. One has to wonder, where's all this smoke coming from? Is it possible that there's fire lurking? That these folks aren't just lobbing unfounded barbs at Manny, that their allegations and hints aren't just sour grapes, or posturing, or a ploy to lure Manny into a fight?

By and large, there hasn't been much in the way of coverage from the standpoint of: what if Manny is using PEDs, or was using PEDs? I think that is rightly so; I'd be more comfortable if none of us trafficked in the innuendo and speculation, and worked within the realm of evidence, and facts. But it's out there, and a topic of conversation and speculation. Perhaps it's a symptom and sign of the times we live in…

TSS reached out to Malignaggi, just off a solid win in his Dec. 12 rematch with Juan Diaz. The Brooklyn-based pugilist has never been shy about speaking his peace (I picture him exiting his mom's womb and barking at the labor and delivery crew to get the room cleaned up, stat!), and he shared with TSS what he bases his allegations, which he's careful to label opinion, upon.

First off, Malignaggi is of the belief that if the Pacquiao-Mayweather negotiations are at a fatal impasse, Yuri Foreman, and not he, will get the coveted date with Pacquiao. Malignaggi has been mentioned as stand-in for Mayweather.

He started off by insisting that ” I have nothing against Pacquiao” but then went from mellow to madman in a 30 second span.

First off, the boxer wonders why Team Pacquiao isn't going after big-time newspapers, with deep pocketed owners, for libel, for insinuating that Pacquiao is drug cheat.

“If Pacquiao's so sue happy, why not sue the New York Daily News?” he asked. “Maybe they know the steroid allegations are true.”

By and large, Malignaggi thinks it is impossible, utterly impossible, for a boxer to put on 15 or more pounds between March 15, 2008, when he fought Juan Manuel Marquez and weighed 129 pounds at the weigh in, and Nov. 14, 2009 when he fought Miguel Cotto and was 144 pounds at the weigh in, and more on fight night.

“It's not natural looking,” Malignaggi said. But, I countered, what if Manny's supremely blessed, that unlike some other fighters who go up in weight, and look a bit bloated, and lack definition, he's just a special creature?

“He's not supremely blessed,” Maliganngi said. “I know body builders. They can't put on 17 or whatever pounds of muscle in a year. It's not doable, in my opinion. These are my speculations, my opinions based on certain factual evidence. Does his weight gain look normal to you? And his head looks like it has blown up in size, too.”

I offered to Malignaggi that perhaps we should be attacking the system, if we believe it to be lacking, rather than the individual.

“We can blame the system a little bit, but if you were Manny, wouldn't you want to leave no doubt? Or speculation?” said Maliganngi, who believes that by not agreeing to the terms set forth by Team Mayweather, and opposing a blood test within 30 days of the bout, Pacquaio appears guilty.

Pacquiao has agreed to take 3 blood tests: the first during the week of the kickoff news conference in early January, the second random test to be conducted no later than 30 days before the fight, and a final test after the bout. A video making the rounds from the HBO 24/7 series shows Pacquiao submitting to a blood test two or three weeks before he was due to fight Ricky Hatton, and that has cast doubt on Team Pacquiao's stance that Manny is disinclined to get a blood test too close to a bout, for fear he may be weakened. Originally, it was reported in error that that test was taken 14 days before the Hatton bout, but subsequent reports pegged the test as being taken 24 days before the scrap. Malignaggi feels Pacquiao has been caught lying, that the report from Team Pacquiao that he “has difficulty taking blood” is a cover story. “Why is he effing lying?” Malignaggi said, heatedly.

The New Yorker doesn't believe too many fighters in the lighter weight classes are using PEDs, but thinks usage isn't uncommon in the heavyweight division. “That's hard to do and make weight,” he said.

The question is asked of Malignaggi: why does the issue make him so steamed?

“I don't like cheaters,” he said. “This is not baseball. You're not just hitting home runs. You have to worry about peoples' lives. Miguel Cotto in my opinion has been beaten by two cheaters. Manny if he's cheating is taking away from guys who are doing things the right way. His team is reneging on their words.”

And what if you're wrong, Malignaggi? What if Manny is clean, and you are hurting his rep with these allegations?

“I bet everything I own that I'm not,” he said. “But we'll never find out. Hey, I would take the test in a heartbeat. I would want people to know I'm clean. He wants to leave doubts!?? His entire legacy is being questioned, he's willing to hurt his legacy and leave $40 million on the table?”

Maliganngi, after reminding TSS that he was correct in predicting he'd be gamed by judges in the first fight with Diaz, insisted that he isn't singling out Pacquiao for a personal vendetta. “”I've never had anything against him. But that's enough now. I call it like I see it.”

What about those who'd say he's just trying to anger Pacquiao, to lure him into a fight?

“No. I expected he'd take the random tests to get this fight. No way I thought he'd throw away everything. That blew me away. It was cool to have my name mentioned.”

Malignaggi thinks the boxing media has dropped the ball, and not exercised due diligence in examining the possibility that Manny has used PEDs.

“I understand most people like Manny, and not Floyd. Just cause that's the case doesn't mean Manny might not be cheating. It's nothing to do with him personally. But I call a spade a spade. Too many people avoid the possibilities because Manny's a likable person. He's got that front, his country loves him. That front works like crazy. Floyd plays the bad guy, but he's natural. Just don't downplay the fact that Manny might be cheating. You have to open your eyes and at least be willing to look at it. This is bigger than me. The fact that the fight is not being made, you have to question the integrity of Pacquiao.”

Malignaggi then offered an analogy to the Manny-refusing-to-be-subjected-to multiple-random-drug-tests prior-to-a-fight-with-Mayweather deal. “It reminds me of the drunk guy who's pulled over at 3 AM. He has a field sobriety test, the cop knows he's drunk, he looks and acts drunk. But he refuses a breathalyzer test. That don't mean the cop don't haul him to the police station.”

I reiterate…I don't think anyone should be casting aspersions based on circumstantial evidence. But with so many people ganging up on Manny, I think fight fans are owed some details on why people are accusing Pacman of using PEDs.

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