Articles of 2009

Alexis Arguello

Published

15 years ago

July 8, 2009

Lenny Mancini sat in a wheelchair at ringside on the night of October 3, 1981. In the archives of the old man’s head were images of a fight that never happened –his title shot against Sammy “The Clutch” Angott. Negotiations were in progress when Mancini was drafted into the army a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He requested a six week furlough and offered to donate the entire purse to the Army Relief Fund. Uncle Sam turned him down. Lenny was hit by mortar shrapnel in France and got a purple heart, but he never got that title shot. It left a hole in his life.

When he was forty-one years old his third child was born, a son.

Ray Mancini had fifty fights as an amateur, developed a swarming style reminiscent of his father’s and was bequeathed his father’s nickname: “Boom Boom”. With a promise that he would complete the Mancini boxing legacy and become lightweight champion for both of them, Boom Boom went big time.

This was supposed to be the night of dreams. The twenty-year-old challenger entered the ring with a record of 20-0 with 15 knockouts and the build of a brawler. Like Rocky Marciano and a host of others from boxing’s golden era, Mancini fought with the kind of ethnic, neighborhood, and familial pride perfected by Italian-Americans. There’s power in that hot blood. Like another left-hooker in Smokin’ Joe Frazier, he was a converted southpaw, so his lead hand was souped-up. Mancini’s assets didn’t stop there: his movie-star good looks suggested neither the heart of a lion, which he had, nor did they suggest that he was a student of boxing history, which he was. The kid was a bello bull with brains.

The lightweight champion standing across the ring had the shape of a whip. At almost 5’10 he was known as the “Explosive Thin Man” and with a record of 72-5 with 57 knockouts he was a veteran of many wars. In 1974, he knocked out his idol “Rockabye” Ruben Olivares and became a featherweight champion. He went to Ruben’s dressing room after the bout and got down on his knees with a promise of his own: “I will defend this title with every drop of my blood.” In 1981, he took the lightweight title from Scotland’s Jim Watt. After the fight he told the man he had just defeated that he will defend the title for him with his blood and his heart. And he did. He insisted on fighting the finest challengers and had twenty-two title fights in four divisions by the time he was finished. The thin man was also a technician extraordinaire. Snapshots of the hook off the jab that finished Alfredo Escalera in the thirteenth round of their rematch can be used in an instruction manual. It landed after a grueling trench war that left both victor and vanquished bloodied. His right hand was famous. When that crossed onto a cheek, it sounded like an M-80 on the Fourth of July. It would set off car alarms outside the casino.

His name was Alexis Arguello.

The fight against Ray Mancini was Arguello’s first defense of his third title. It was a classic. Lenny watched as his son mounted a relentless, two-fisted attack –the attack of two men. Incredibly, Ray was ahead after the twelfth round on two of the three judges’ scorecards. But Arguello was a long-term investor. Enduring volatility in the market of the ring was nothing to him; he could stomach a loss in the value of his investment over several rounds. His mind was on the end, and he moved toward that end as inexorably as the stock market countdown. In the twelfth round, Alexis landed his money punch and Ray’s point advantage at once began to depreciate as he crashed. Ray was tough; he got up, though the long-term investor is patient. In the fourteenth, the champion delivered a left hook, an uppercut to the middle, two more left hooks, and then a right cross. Ray went down again and the fight was stopped.

The elder Mancini’s eyes fell to the floor for a moment and then found Ray, who was being assisted back to his corner by the referee. Alexis’ celebration was restrained. He saw the man in the wheelchair, leaned over the ropes and called out “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Minutes later, the champion was being interviewed in the ring. Ray walked over and Alexis’s eyes lit up when he saw him. He clasped Ray’s hand and embraced him. “Good, good, good, good,” Alexis strained to express himself in English but communicated his affection as flawlessly as any Italian. He pinched his cheek. He gave him perspective: “I love your father. That’s the most beautiful thing you have…” He offered encouragement: “I promise if I can do something for you, let me know, please, okay?” The Nicaraguan said these things with the tip of his thumb touching his first fingers, like an honorary paisan. Alexis knew about Lenny’s dream, he knew about Sammy Angott, he knew about the draft. On the way out of the ring, he took Lenny’s hand and embraced Ellen Mancini, “I’m sorry, it’s my job,” he said, “I love your son. He will be a world champion.”

At the press conference, Alexis quietly spoke to Ray about how he himself lost his first title shot when he was barely past twenty years old, how he cried, and how he won it in his second try.

Ray too would win a title in his second try only seven months later when he stopped champion Arturo Frias in one round. His parents celebrated in the ring with him. Alexis Arguello was there. “I told you! I told you!” he said to the Mancinis.

Four months later, Alexis fought southpaw James “Bubba” Busceme in Busceme’s hometown of Beaumont, Texas. Clive Gammon of Sports Illustrated and other reporters noticed that after Alexis stopped him in the sixth round, he took Busceme’s head in his gloves. “I told him that he was a man,” Alexis revealed in the dressing room, “I wanted him to feel strong again, and give him his pride back. I told him he fought like a man, just like Mancini.” The day after the bout, Bubba Busceme was in a local restaurant celebrating his 30th birthday. Alexis brought him a cake. Still at a loss last week, Busceme, now 57, asked the Beaumont Enterprise “How many guys would do that? How many world champion boxers would bring the person they just fought a cake?”

Roberto Elizondo, who was also knocked out by Arguello, told the San Antonio Express-News that Alexis “was always very gracious to me and my family. He was one of the best.”

When Jim Watt was introduced at the weigh-in at Wembley before their bout, Alexis was in the background, clapping for him. “Be nice with everyone,” Arguello told the Ocala Star Banner in 1982, “That’s the most important thing I’ve learned in 14 years of fighting.”

Aaron Pryor, the former junior welterweight champion who stopped Alexis from becoming the first quadruple champion, speaks now of how Alexis taught him to carry himself with dignity in public; how they were friends from the moment they shed tears together after their rematch –Alexis in his disappointment and Aaron for Alexis. “I’m finished,” Alexis said as he stood in defeat, head bowed.

The tears of Aaron Pryor mingle with millions now.

Alexis Arguello’s body was found in his home with a hole in the heart on July 1. News reports said there were no signs of violence in the room and that traces of gunpowder were found on his hands.

Officials in Nicaragua confirmed that he shot himself in the chest with a 9mm pistol.

Gary Smith’s Sports Illustrated profile of Arguello in 1985 opened with the story of his father’s attempt to commit suicide by jumping headlong into a well. He survived the fall but when they lowered a chair tied to a rope, he took the rope off the chair and looped it around his neck, then yelled “¡hale!” [pull!].Despite his efforts, he survived. Alexis was six years old. By the time he was fourteen, Alexis found boxing.

The Sweet Science anchored him. It is a common irony among fighters that sees the ring as a safe harbor. For him, it was a place of clarity, a place where his compassion followed his competitiveness on a valiant platform. “I am a reincarnated gladiator”, he told Smith. Gladiators faced ferocity in their virtual existence but were exempt from the distressing uncertainty of civilian life. They lived to fight and fought to live and there were no devils because there were no details. Their economy could be placed on a single coin –on one side was life/victory, on the other death/defeat. Combat is simple, the objective clear. It is outside the coliseum or the ring where things get complicated. Ask Mike Tyson. “I thank God that I found something to give me hope,” Alexis attested in an interview from the mid-1990s, “for giving me the chance to be somebody.”

After a fifteen year career capped off by legendary wars with Pryor, Arguello retired. It was like stepping out of Narnia and into a gray world where nothing mattered and no one seemed to care. Depression set in. Addictions spiraled out of control. The specter of suicide inherited, perhaps, from his father began to whisper in his ear; pointing to the corruption of his beloved country, the darkness in the world, the emptiness of his life. The end was almost in 1984. Alexis sat in his yacht off the coast of Florida with a gun to his head –his finger on the trigger. Something dark whispered “jale.” “Pull.” After several tense minutes and the pleadings of his twelve-year-old son, he relented.

Alexis was staring into the abyss and the abyss was staring into him. He returned to the ring briefly in 1985 and again in 1994. He had to. It was safe there.

God knows he had issues. You don’t watch your father try to kill himself twice, grow up in poverty in a third world country, endure war, exile, financial ruin, and the death of a younger brother shot and lit on fire as he lay on a pile of tires –and not have issues. For Alexis, a living rebuke to the calloused brutes of pugilism’s stereotype, these issues were magnified. His empathy was matched by his sensitivity. Most of us natural cynics hear about misery, corruption, or exploitation and shrug our shoulders –this man would grow indignant or sink into a morass of despair.

He was interviewed by Peter Heller in 1986 and spoke openly about how he is “lonely in the world”, about how he did not want to keep living because of the “wrong things” that seemed to be everywhere. Disturbingly, he wished that he could have “the guts” to commit suicide, “I wish I could. I wish I could, Jesus Christ, leave this place.” Most retired boxers will tell you that they have to find a way to make a living. To Alexis, still waters ran deeper –he wanted to find a way “to live again.”

Perhaps those dark whispers finally managed to drown out everything else –his faith, his family and fans, the rising star of his political career, his courage to go on. He once said that he was “disenchanted”, that the “beauty of the world had disappeared.” There can be little doubt that he was engaged in an internal back-and-forth battle with despair that made his ring wars seem like Sunday strolls. Fifteen rounds? This looked like an existential crisis that lasted over two decades. Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, the late author of Man’s Search for Meaning saw a powerful connection between feelings of meaninglessness and the neurotic triad of depression, aggression, and addiction. Suicide, he said, is depression’s sequel.

Ray Mancini doesn’t believe that Alexis Arguello committed suicide. “He was the face of Nicaragua,” he told me recently, “he relished that. He loved that.” However, there were allegations that his election last November as mayor of Managua was marred by ballot rigging and intimidation and he himself was under investigation for misappropriating public funds. Perhaps he felt himself disgraced, defiled even, and forgetting that he was a Roman Catholic, did what a Roman patrician might have done under the same circumstances –fell on his sword.

I don’t know. I only wish that he had found a way to beat the count …because those he left behind didn’t hear a bell.

Thankfully, those he left behind still have his immortal image on fight films. We’ll marvel at this legend all over again and affirm how his spirit surpassed even the level of his skill and the splendor of his achievements. Despite his faults and failings, despite whatever happened at the end of his life, Alexis was noble. It should never be forgotten that during the last great era of boxing, he taught fatherless boys from poor neighborhoods all over the world about the divinity of kindness and the meaning of chivalry. I was among them. God knows we needed his example.

I hope he heard the applause of multitudes as he slipped between golden ropes to a place that’s better than this, to a place where every tear is wiped away and broken hearts are healed. May he shine like the sun.

Adios …y gracias, Alexis Arguello.

…..

Special thanks to Ray Mancini. Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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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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