Articles of 2009

Fireworks And Falling Giants

Published

15 years ago

June 30, 2009

Springs Toledo

“Nothing so challenges the American spirit as tackling the biggest job on earth.”

~ Lyndon B. Johnson, 1941

The Fourth of July marks the 233rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The elegant signatures on parchment by an unruly combination of American colonists provoked the giant that was Great Britain; and the world was never the same. The giant appeared eight days later when a fleet of warships sailed up the Verrazano Narrows in New York “like a forest of pine trees with their branches trimmed.”

“We must all hang together,” quipped Benjamin Franklin, “or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” The patriots not only hung together, they implemented an unorthodox and by some measures, an absurd strategy to score a technical knockout.

The Fourth of July also marks the 90th anniversary of Jack Dempsey’s destruction of another superior force, in heavyweight champion Jess Willard. There was nothing elegant about it. Dempsey had already made short work of rather large fighters that today could satisfy the definition of “super heavyweight” in Fred Fulton and Carl Morris, but Willard was something else. Known as the “Pottawatomie Giant”, Willard was 6’6 ½ and 245 pounds.

Gunboat Smith, a banger who stood 6’2, also fought Willard. He told Peter Heller that early on, he threw a good shot at Willard and “his hair wiggled a little bit. That’s all. I said ‘Holy Jesus, that was my best punch, no detours, right from the floor, right on his chin.’” Smith decided to move around him and box him from a safe distance. In the tenth round, a frustrated Willard said “come on out here and fight, you big bum.”

“Big bum?” Smith laughed, “I’m hiding behind his goddamned leg!”

Jack Dempsey was smaller than Gunboat Smith. At only 6’1 and 180 pounds he looked like a wee lad next to the champion, so he was listed at 187 to make it look better. A patriotic American with Cherokee blood in him, Dempsey turned the theory of strategic retreat on its head. General George Washington lost battles as a matter of course but kept in mind his ultimate objective, which was essentially to take the Redcoats into deep water and drown them. He made it a war of attrition and non-engagement where the hometown advantage would help the army -and thus the sacred cause- to survive long enough to win. It was a revolution won by military conservatism. The twenty-four year old Dempsey was offended by the very concept of patience. His style of fighting called to mind a drowning man in a whirlpool.

Willard’s fight plan against this challenger was no different than that employed by the current heavyweight champion newly recognized by The Ring: keep the smaller man at the end of his long jab, and douse him with a right cross now and then to keep him honest. That long left jab and waiting strategy baffled even the great Jack Johnson when Willard became the White Hope Realized. Willard was also throwing right uppercuts in training camp, albeit not at any sparring partners for fear of hurting them. (Like Wladimir Klitschko, Jess was a gentleman.) Dempsey fought out of a semi-crouch and Jess planned to catch that hanging jaw and launch it to the moon. It was no secret that Willard had killed Bull Young with a gargantuan right uppercut in 1913. Some claimed it broke his neck. The giant wasn’t an active champion however, having only defended his title once since the win over Jack Johnson. He was even making a go in the entertainment industry. The New York Times carried ads in the sports section for “The Challenge of Chance” which was playing in movie houses in the summer of 1919. In his role as a heroic ranch foreman, Willard would swing his mighty arms and upwards of twenty assailants would “tumble down like tenpins.”

Dempsey’s sparring partners included Big Bill Tate who was of comparable size to Jess and the middleweight Jamaica Kid. Dempsey knocked Tate cold on June 24 and was chasing Jamaica Kid out of the ring. There was talk of his being “too fine” –that he had peaked too early and had to be restrained from overtraining.

Forget the “Long Count Fight”. The killer in a semi-crouch that was Dempsey had fear and death on his mind in Toledo. He wasn’t civilized. By the time he lost to Gene Tunney, he had long since brushed off the muck of the back alley and was extending his pinky in tea rooms with celebrities.

Forget the stories about Dempsey loading his glove with an iron bolt or using plaster of Paris against Jess Willard. Both fighters inspected each other’s wrapped hands in the ring before the gloves went on, and the gloves went on under supervision. Dempsey’s blow was described by a contemporary as about equal to the “kick of an army mule in a tantrum.” It’s as simple as that. Over half of Dempsey’s wins up to that point came by knockout in one or two rounds and the gloves used on that hot afternoon were only five ounces. Interestingly, the ring was not the regulation twenty-four square foot ring but only twenty square feet to accommodate extra press rows. When Dempsey was informed of this change he snapped, “you can make it fifteen square for all I care.”

Fifty years after the fact Dempsey was interviewed by the Toledo Blade: “I took one look at Jess and said to myself ‘you’re not fighting for the title, you’re fighting for your life.’” With that attitude, Dempsey came snorting out of his corner to engage the giant. Willard threw a one-two that did no damage, then a jab that was slipped. The two clinched and Dempsey can be seen on the film with his open gloves on the crease of Willard’s arms to guard against uppercuts. The referee broke them and Dempsey, itching to unload his artillery, gallops in behind a vicious right to the body, followed by a left hook to the head, a right, and a finishing left hook that sent Willard down for the first time in his eight year career. Willard later said that he “didn’t recover” from that left hook until about an hour after he left the ring.

There were six more knockdowns in round one and the star-spangled beat down continued until a bloody towel sailed into the ring. The giant had surrendered before round four and Dempsey was king.
…..
America’s birthday is imminent, but the prospect of an American heavyweight champion is not. The superpower on the throne comes out of Eastern Europe in the form of Wladimir Klitschko. He is the same size as Jess Willard, with a similar conservative fighting style and a nonviolent disposition. Nevertheless, since 2006 he has dominated freedom-loving Chris Byrd, Calvin Brock, Ray Austin, Lamon Brewster, Tony Thompson, and Hasim Rahman, stopping them all.

Only Brewster had success against Wlad, and only in their first fight where he was losing right up to the moment he landed a left hook, right cross, left hook combination that turned Wlad’s legs to lokshyna.

Since then, Wladimir Klitschko’s fights have been glorified sparring sessions. He is typically fought from the wrong range by second-rate guys that have no answers for the jab, who are content to allow him to play tyrant and dictate everything that goes on. American heavyweights, once hailed the world for fire-breathing ferocity, seem to be ailing from acute testosterone deficiency. They get an opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to become a heavyweight champion, and then spend rounds passively looking for proof that they are outgunned by Wlad. Boxing fans watch reruns of masochism evolving into surrender.

Whatever happened to the motto “don’t tread on me”?

American heavyweights are indeed outgunned –no less than the citizen-soldiers at Breeds Hill or Saratoga. No less than Jack Dempsey. But neither those patriots nor the Manassa Mauler behaved as if their downfall was written in the heavens. No. They rewrote the script: shake your fist at the giant and blast away until you stand on his collapsed frame, and then watch your reputation ascend to the stars.

Klitschko may seem like an empire unto himself but he is no more unbeatable than Jess Willard was ninety years ago.

Trainer Manny Steward, the Kronk guru who has trained over two dozen champions in a career spanning over thirty years, develops ring technicians. Klitschko, despite what some commentators will have you believe, is not a technician in the strict sense of the word. Steward has given him simple strategies which he follows to the letter but he has not progressed as a technician. He does a few things well, but where is the counterpunching skill, infighting, combination punching, body punching, or serious defensive techniques? Wlad has a jab that is sometimes pawing but that can also be of the Liston, lamp post type. He has a hard right and a devastating left hook. His defense is limited to clinches and retreats: That’s more or less the extent of his repertoire. It is certainly true that he hasn’t had a compelling need to demonstrate other skills, but is that proof positive that his repertoire is any more extensive than we’ve seen? Unlikely. Boxers cannot hide what and who they are. What you see is the naked truth. Klitschko has a few tools in his tool box that he uses very well. It’s his size that presents such problems.

More importantly than what’s under the hood is the psychology of who’s driving. Wlad has been stopped three times. Ross Purrity, Corrie Sanders, and Lamon Brewster fought him aggressively and were able to bounce shots off of his head until something inside Wlad broke. When dealing with sustained aggression, Wlad seems to panic. When hurt, Wlad has been prone to come apart.

Lamon Brewster did several things in his first meeting with Klitschko that mirrored what Jack Dempsey did against Willard. He bobbed and weaved, slipped the jab, applied pressure, closed the distance quickly when Wlad was in retreat, and punched in combination. Wlad didn’t punch himself out as claimed –he was taken completely out of his comfort zone and overwhelmed. It was anxiety that exhausted him. Unfortunately for the man known as “Relentless”, the second time he fought Wlad he looked like he was standing in line at a bakery waiting for cherry pies –and he got dozens of them in the form of left jabs.

That part of the script can be rewritten too. “Once in a while,” Jess Willard admitted after the Dempsey fight, “I felt my head clearing and instinctively stuck out my long left which had served so well in previous fights. When I saw my opponent slipping easily past that protection, I realized that unless I landed a lucky blow, I was sure to lose.”

Giants tend to develop a fairly simple, sedated style that is built around physical control of their opponent. Like the Jess jab, the Wlad jab is the primary instrument of oppression. A nervous jabbing contest may ensue that the smaller man can never win, and once lulled by the hypnotic “tit-for-tat”, Wlad will suddenly commit to a right, and then it’s “tit-for-splat”. Most of the hooks Wlad throws are sweeping hooks to force his man to stay in front of him. When the opponent gets too close for comfort, Wlad clinches and leans on him. It’s all about control. He’s hoping to wear the opponent out or convince him that it is futile to resist domination. Trainers take note: Wlad is not dangerous when his opponent is. He doesn’t punch when he is being punched. This is not only a glimpse into an elemental weakness; it is a key to victory.

Wlad is cautious to a fault. He fights like a man carrying a priceless vase across a mine field, only the vase is his chin and the mine field has been a meadow. The key is to take the control away from him by detonating fireworks under his nose. The key is to fight him like John Paul Jones would. With his ship shattered and sinking under the superior firepower of the British frigate Serapis and his crew decimated, Jones was asked by the British captain if he would surrender. Jones hollered “I have not yet begun to fight!” One of his grenades flew into the main deck battery of the larger ship, ignited the casks of gunpowder, and the Serapis soon surrendered to the Americans.

Jack Dempsey’s grenades were no less deliberately launched than those of John Paul Jones. He fought with the savagery of a strategist. The film confirms that the only time he was at Willard’s preferred range was when he was passing through to the inside –to the main deck battery if you will. Dempsey was either outside of Willard’s reach or inside of his reach, he never stayed where Willard could hit him and he couldn’t hit Willard. To get close, he would get low and shoot in behind hard, slashing punches that forced the larger man on the defensive. This allowed Dempsey to take momentary advantage and exploit it with combinations. An off-balance giant is a vulnerable giant. Importantly, Dempsey punched with maximum leverage. He had disdain for anything less:

“I blasted him into helplessness by using my exploding fast-moving body-weight against him.”

He blasted him into helplessness and upheld the great American tradition of beating the odds.
…..
The Ring Ratings’ sixth ranked heavyweight contender has said that he would like to be the Mexican Jack Johnson. But Jack Johnson didn’t overcome Jess Willard, Jack Dempsey did. Cristobal Arreola needs to get in serious shape and then someone needs to show him precisely how Dempsey felled that giant ninety years ago.

Arreola was born in East LA. He has the bombs and he has the belligerence.

Does he have the patriotism?
……..
Springs Toledo can be reached at scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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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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