manny pacquiao blatant use of PED

I don’t see how he is any more blatant than guys who have actually popped.

Heck, what Floyd did before their fight was more egregious than anything Manny ever did.

I’m a huge PAC fan. He more than likely had help. It’s really the only way to explain what he accomplished during his prime. It defies logic otherwise. He was that special of a fighter.

His run was akin to Bonds or Lance.

But hey, if he (or they) weren’t doping, surely the top dog would have been. That’s just the era that it was in the ‘00’s.

I’m sure we will come to learn that LeBron was as well. His game is predicated on freakish athleticism and durability the game has never seen before.

 

Yep this,just the same as the rest of em,couldn’t help thinking Michael Conan looked jacked after seeing a pic this morning of him.
Ken Shamrock the ex MMA self confessed juice head said it’s no good trying to tackle this from the top as these guys have the means and money to cycle on off between fights and beat the system,he said we need to go to those just starting out on their careers to see the true scope of this problem cause to be sure I’d say 90% have used something at some time and why wouldn’t they as that **** really works,can’t help wondering if GGGs drop off has been PED related and I say this as a massive Golovkin fan only one that doesn’t pretend my favourite athletes are doing this clean lol.

 

Good post. There is no evidence linking Pacquiao to PED's. It's all hearsay and circumstantial. "But, Pacquiao moved up so many weight classes and then destroyed everybody. Look at him annihilating everybody in the higher weight classes". But then you realize that Pacquiao has an extremely low KO percentage above 135 pounds...

"We've never seen anybody move up like that and then punish everybody". Well that's debatable and Pacquiao stopped knocking people out as he moved up in weight. So what you just said is actually not accurate. It's not like Pacquiao just kept moving up in weight to infinity and kept on destroying everybody. The knockouts literally stopped.

He built his reputation as a huge destroyer in the higher weights because he iced Hatton with 1 punch. Who was also iced by a featherfisted Floyd Mayweather. And Hatton walked straight in to an overhand left counter that landed right on the chin and neck. WTF did he expect? To just walk through a shot like that? And then people point to his beatdown of Cotto. Which is an appropriate way to describe it. A beatdown. It was a gradual accumulation of punches that did him in. It's not like Pac went in there and was hitting so damn hard that Cotto just backed up every time Pac touched him and folded quickly. He took punch after punch after punch before the ref stopped it.

 

Great points. Thanks for adding clarity to a very opeque perception of Manny’s progression through the higher divisions. While he carried up his speed, reflexes and stamina....his power was definitely impacted and not a prevalent. I’m just baffled that the accusations around PEDs towards PAC is viewed by some as fact when really it’s very weak. Especially when we consider how the accusations manifested. Mayweather and his team leveled these accusations almost a decade ago and there hasn’t been on instance that would add any validity to those claims. On the contrary, Floyd has multiple instances that are highly suspect and are very concerning around whether or not he’s failed drug tests or has attempted to mask PED use trough IV’s.

 

This makes me laugh. Tommy Heans started at 147, ended up at cruiserweight and KO'd folks (roughly 50 pound jump). So I guess Hearns was on PEDs as well. So, you think a guy, who never tested positive for PEDs is the most blatant boxer to use them. Nice logic.

 

I'm obviously a huge Manny Pacquiao fan, but I honestly don't think that he was/is using PEDs. Aside from all of the other facts that people happily ignore

This content is protected

. They say Manny stopped stopping people after the accusations, but who was he supposed to have stopped?

Also...

• Manny has noticeably pulled his punches in fights where he was washing the guy (Rios, Algieri, Margarito); this just isn't the mark of a cheater

• Doesn't fight dirty, doesn't retaliate

• Manny noticeably gasses and his punches no longer have the same snap (contrast this with dudes like JMM who throw nuclear bombs from opening to final bell)

 

It gets stupid with these manny PED accusations

Most manny haters would say he fought drained, shot or easy opponents during his great run at 147

Even will go as far as to claim & believe clottey was paid by arum to throw the fight vs manny

Also apparently vs clottey & mosley he was off the juice because he wasnt able put a sustained beating on them or get the ko

Then there's this believe that manny was this nasty ko artist at 147 he wasnt he beat oscar & cotto by accumulation of punches he was extremely to fast for them not powerful

Manny was a terrible style matchup for hatton

Even more so for clottey who uses the shell defense

Manny's unhuman speed, beautiful foot movement, stocky legs & evolved right hand allowed him to have the type of success he had at 147

And the way you idiots speak of manny you would think he was on some super steriods why haven't no other fighters been able to get their hands on the **** manny was taking

 

Manny was a blatant ped abuser. His own coach snitched him out because he can’t keep his mouth shut. Manny’s has even blatantly lied about his use of street drugs recently because of his dictator Deurte when it’s common knowledge he’s a dope head. Just stop. He even takes medication for his kidneys.

 

Go back to TMZ you drama queen...

 

Lmao. Hilarious post pointing out how outrageously dumb that guys statement was. If we are talking about the blatant users of PEDs perhaps we should start with the guys who you know failed a drug test.

 

Roach and Ariza had bad blood between each other and no one "snitched" claiming PAC was on any PED's. Roach simply threw a jab to hurt Alex about his "shakes" that he didn't know what was in them. It was more to damage Alex because he didn't like him and wanted to cast a shadow on his career as a S&C coach, not to "snitch" on PAC using PEDs. Alex worked with Floyd as well and if Floyd really thought Manny was doping, he wouldn't have aligned himself with Ariza. The bigger story is failed drug tests and illegal IV administration before fights which have been substantiated and linked to Floyd...not Manny.

 

There was nothing illegal about it, learn the story. It was already confirmed he did nothing wrong, nothing

It was supervised by professionals and it was 100% legitimate, dehydration issues.

We all know Manny did peds and Ariza already confirmed it. Floyd didn't get Ariza for PEDS, he got him for his world class training regiments.

He did none of those shakes, those ped fueled shakes

 

USADA collection agents found evidence of an IV being administered to Mayweather. Bob Bennett, the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which had jurisdiction over the fight, says that USADA did not tell the commission whether the IV was actually being administered when the agents arrived. USADA did later advise the NSAC that Mayweather’s medical team told its agents that the IV was administered to address concerns related to dehydration.

Mayweather’s medical team also told the collection agents that the IV consisted of two separate mixes. The first was a mixture of 250 milliliters of saline and multi-vitamins. The second was a 500-milliliter mixture of saline and Vitamin C. Seven hundred and fifty milliliters equals 25.361 ounces, an amount equal to roughly 16 percent of the blood normally present in an average adult male.

The mixes themselves are not prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which sets the standards that USADA purports to follow. However, their intravenous administration is prohibited by WADA.

More specifically, the 2015 WADA “Prohibited Substances and Methods List” states, “Intravenous infusions and/or injections of more than 50 ml per 6 hour period are prohibited except for those legitimately received in the course of hospital admissions, surgical procedures, or clinical investigations.”

This prohibition is in effect at all times that the athlete is subject to testing. It exists because, in addition to being administered for the purpose of adding specific substances to a person’s body, an IV infusion can dilute or mask the presence of another substance that is already in the recipient’s system or might be added to it in the near future.

What happened next with regard to Mayweather is extremely troubling.

Mayweather has gone to great lengths to propagate the notion that he is in the forefront of PED testing to “clean up” boxing. Beginning with his 2010 fight against Shane Mosley, he has mandated that he and his opponent be subjected to what he calls “Olympic-style testing” by USADA.

At a media “roundtable” in New York before the June 24, 2013, kick-off press conference for Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez, Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe declared, “We’ve put in place a mechanism where all Mayweather Promotions fighters will do mandatory blood and urine testing 365-24-7 by USADA.”

But neither Mayweather nor the fighters that Mayweather Promotions has under contract have undergone 365-24-7 testing - tests that can be administered any place at any time and would make it more risky for an athlete to use prohibited PEDs.

Drug testing for a Mayweather fight generally begins shortly after the fight is announced. Mayweather and his opponent agree to keep USADA advised as to their whereabouts at all times and submit to an unlimited number of unannounced blood and urine tests. That sounds good. But in effect, USADA allows Mayweather to determine when the testing begins. That leaves a long period of time during which there are no checks on what substances he might put into his body.

For example, Mayweather didn’t announce Andre Berto as the opponent for his upcoming Sept. 12 fight until Aug. 4, only 39 days before the fight. That didn’t leave much time for serious drug testing. From the conclusion of the Pacquiao fight until the Berto announcement, Mayweather was not subject to USADA testing.

“Mayweather is not doing ‘Olympic-style testing,’” Conte states. “Olympic testing means that you can be tested twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. If USADA was serious about boxing becoming a clean sport, it would say, ‘We don’t do one-offs. If you sign up for USADA testing, we reserve the right to test you at any time 365-24-7.’ But that’s not what USADA does with Mayweather or any other fighter that I know of.”

“The benefits that an athlete retains from using anabolic steroids and certain other PEDs carry over for months,” Conte continues. “Anybody who knows anything about the way these drugs work knows that you don’t perform at your best when you’re actually on the drugs. You get maximum benefit after the use stops. I can’t tell you what Floyd Mayweather is and isn’t doing. What he could be doing is this. The fight is over. First, he uses these drugs for tissue repair. Then he can stay on them until he announces his next fight, at which time he’s the one who decides when the next round of testing starts. And by the time testing starts, the drugs have cleared his system.

“Do I know that’s what’s happening? No, I don’t. I do know that the testing period for Mayweather’s fights is getting shorter and shorter. What is it for this one? Five weeks? The whole concept of one man dictating the testing schedule is wrong. But USADA lets Mayweather do it. USADA is not doing effective comprehensive testing on Floyd Mayweather. Testing for four or five weeks before a fight is nonsense.”

As noted earlier, USADA CEO Travis Tygart declined to be interviewed for this article. Instead, senior communications manager Annie Skinner emailed a statement to this writer that outlines USADA’s mission and reads in part, “Just like for our Olympic athletes, any pro-boxing program follows WADA’s international standards, including: the Prohibited List, the International Standard for Testing & Investigations (ISTI), the International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions (ISTUEs) and the International Standards for Protection of Privacy and Personal Information (ISPPPI).”

Skinner’s statement is incorrect. This writer has obtained a copy of the contract entered into between USADA, Floyd Mayweather, and Manny Pacquiao for drug testing in conjunction with Mayweather-Pacquiao. A copy of the entire contract can be found here.

Paragraph 30 of the contract states, “If any rule or regulation whatsoever incorporated or referenced herein conflicts in any respect with the terms of this Agreement, this Agreement shall in all such respects control. Such rules and regulations include, but are not limited to: the Code [the World Anti-Doping Code]; the USADA Protocol; the WADA Prohibited List; the ISTUE [WADA International Standard for Therapeutic Use Exemptions]; and the ISTI [WADA International Standard for Testing and Investigations].”

In other words, USADA was not bound by the drug testing protocols that one might have expected it to follow in conjunction with Mayweather-Pacquiao. And this divergence was significant vis-a-vis its rulings with regard to the IV that was administered to Mayweather on May 1.

In evaluating USADA’s conduct with regard to Mayweather’s IV, the evolution of the USADA-Mayweather-Pacquiao contract is important.

It was announced publicly that the bout contract Mayweather and Pacquiao signed in February 2015 to fight each other provided that drug testing would be conducted by USADA. But the actual contract with USADA remained to be negotiated. In early March, USADA presented the Pacquiao camp with a contract that allowed the testing agency to grant a retroactive therapeutic use exemption (TUE) to either fighter in the event that the fighter tested positive for a prohibited drug. That retroactive exemption could have been granted without notifying the Nevada State Athletic Commission or the opposing fighter’s camp.

Team Pacquiao thought that was outrageous and an opportunity for Mayweather to game the system. Pacquiao refused to sign the contract.

Thereafter, Mayweather and USADA agreed to mutual notification and the limitation of retroactive therapeutic use exemptions to narrowly delineated circumstances. With regard to notice, a copy of the final USADA-Mayweather-Pacquiao contract provides: “Mayweather and Pacquiao agree that USADA shall notify both athletes within 24 hours of any of the following occurrences: (1) the approval by USADA of a TUE application submitted by either athlete; and/or (2) the existence of and/or any modification to an existing approved TUE. Notification pursuant to this paragraph shall consist of and be limited to: (a) the date of the application; (b) the prohibited substance(s) or method(s) for which the TUE is sought; and (c) the manner of use for the prohibited substance(s) or method(s) for which the TUE is sought.”

 

How was Mayweather’s IV handled by USADA?

As previously noted, the weigh-in and IV administration occurred on May 1. The fight was on May 2. For 20 days after the IV was administered, USADA chose not to notify the Nevada State Athletic Commission about the procedure.

Finally, on May 21, USADA sent a letter to Francisco Aguilar and Bob Bennett (respectively, the chairman and executive director of the NSAC) with a copy to Top Rank (Pacquiao’s promoter) informing them that a retroactive therapeutic use exemption had been granted to Mayweather. The letter did not say when the request for the retroactive TUE was made by Mayweather or when it was granted by USADA.

Subsequent correspondence in response to requests by the NSAC and Top Rank for further information revealed that the TUE was not applied for until May 19 and was granted on May 20.

In other words, 18 days after the fight, USADA gave Mayweather a retroactive therapeutic use exemption for a procedure that is on the WADA “Prohibited Substances and Methods List.” And because of a loophole in its drug-testing contract, USADA wasn’t obligated to notify the Nevada State Athletic Commission or Pacquiao camp regarding Mayweather’s IV until after the retroactive TUE was granted.

Meanwhile, on May 2 (fight night), Pacquiao’s request to be injected with Toradol (a legal substance) to ease the pain caused by a torn rotator cuff was denied by the Nevada State Athletic Commission because the request was not made in a timely manner.

A conclusion that one might draw from these events is that it helps to have friends at USADA.

“It’s bizarre,” Don Catlin says with regard to the retroactive therapeutic use exemption that USADA granted to Mayweather. “It’s very troubling to me. USADA has yet to explain to my satisfaction why Mayweather needed an IV infusion. There might be a valid explanation, but I don’t know what it is.”

Victor Conte is equally perturbed.

“I don’t get it,” Conte says. “There are strict criteria for the granting of a TUE. You don’t hand them out like Halloween candy. And this sort of IV use is clearly against the rules. Also, from a medical point of view, if they’re administering what they said they did, it doesn’t make sense to me. There are more effective ways to rehydrate. If you drank ice-cold Celtic seawater, you’d have far greater benefits. It’s very suspicious to me. I can tell you that IV drugs clear an athlete’s system more quickly than drugs that are administered by subcutaneous injection. So why did USADA make this decision? Why did they grant something that’s prohibited? In my view, that’s something federal law enforcement officials should be asking Travis Tygart.”

Bob Bennett (who worked for the FBI before assuming his present position as executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission) has this to say: “The TUE for Mayweather’s IV - and the IV was administered at Floyd’s house, not in a medical facility, and wasn’t brought to our attention at the time - was totally unacceptable. I’ve made it clear to Travis Tygart that this should not happen again. We have the sole authority to grant any and all TUEs in the state of Nevada. USADA is a drug-testing agency. USADA should not be granting waivers and exemptions. Not in this state. We are less than pleased that USADA acted the way it did.”

f Bennett looks at what transpired before he became executive director of the NSAC, he might have further reason to question USADA’s performance.

The use of carbon isotope ratio (CIR) testing as a means of identifying the presence of exogenous (synthetic) testosterone in an athlete’s body was developed in part under the direction of Don Catlin. It has been used in conjunction with Olympic testing since the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano.

As noted earlier, USADA often declines to administer CIR testing to boxers on grounds that it is unnecessary and too expensive. The cost is roughly $400 per test, although VADA CEO Dr. Margaret Goodman notes, “If you do a lot of them, you can negotiate price.”


If VADA (which charges far less than USADA for drug testing) can afford CIR testing on every urine sample that it collects from a boxer, then USADA can afford it too.

“If you’re serious about drug testing,” says Victor Conte, “you do CIR testing.”

But CIR testing has been not been fully utilized for Floyd Mayweather’s fights. Instead, USADA has chosen to rely primarily on a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio test to determine if exogenous testosterone is in an athlete’s system.

Testosterone and epitestosterone are naturally occurring hormones. Testosterone is performance enhancing. Epitestosterone is not.

A normal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio is slightly more than 1-to-1. Conte says that one recent study of the general population “placed the average T-E ratio for whites at 1.2-to-1 and for blacks at 1.3-to-1.”

Under WADA standards, a testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio of up to 4-to-1 is acceptable. That allows for any reasonable variation in an athlete’s natural testosterone level (which, for an elite athlete, might be particularly high). If the ratio is above 4-to-1, an athlete is presumed to be doping.

Some athletes who use exogenous testosterone game the system by administering exogenous epitestosterone to drive their testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio down beneath the permitted ceiling. This can be done by injection or by the application of epitestosterone as a cream. In the absence of a CIR test, this masks the use of synthetic testosterone.

But there’s a catch. If an athlete tries to manipulate his or her testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio, it is difficult to balance the outcome. If an athlete uses too much epitestosterone - and the precise amount is difficult to calibrate - the result can be an abnormally low T-E ratio.

“In and of itself,” Conte explains, “an abnormally low T-E ratio is not proof of doping. The ratio can vary for the same athlete from test to test. But an abnormally low T-E ratio is a red flag. And if you’re serious about the testing, the next thing you do [after a low T-E ratio test result] is administer a CIR test on the same sample.”

Earlier this year, in response to a request for documents, the Nevada State Athletic Commission produced two lab reports listing the testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio on tests that it (not USADA) had overseen on Floyd Mayweather. In one instance, blood and urine samples were taken from Mayweather on Aug. 18, 2011 (prior to his Sept. 17 fight against Victor Ortiz). In the other instance, blood and urine samples were taken from Mayweather on April 3, 2013 (prior to his May 4 fight against Robert Guerrero).

Mayweather’s testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio for the April 3, 2013, sample was 0.80. His testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio for the Aug. 18, 2011, sample was 0.69.

“That’s a warning flag,” says Don Catlin. “If you’re serious about the testing, it tells you to do the CIR test.”

The Nevada State Athletic Commission wasn’t as knowledgeable with regard to PED testing several years ago as it is now. Commission personnel might not have understood the possible implications of the 0.69 and 0.80 numbers. But USADA officials were knowledgeable.

Did USADA perform CIR testing on Mayweather’s urine samples during that time period? What were the results? And if there was no CIR testing, what testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio did USADA’s tests show? At present, the answers to these questions are not publicly known.

Note to investigators: CIR tests can be performed retroactively on frozen samples.

All of this leads to another issue. As noted by NSAC executive director Bob Bennett, “As of now, USADA does not give us the full test results. They give us the contracts for drug testing and summaries that tell us whether a fighter has tested positive or negative. It is incumbent on them to notify us if a fighter tests positive. But no, they don’t give us the full test results.”

Laz Benitez reports a similar lack of transparency in New York. On Aug. 10, Benitez advised this writer that the New York State Athletic Commission had received information from USADA regarding test results for four fights where the drug testing was conducted by USADA. But Benitez added, “The results received were summaries.”

Why is that significant? Because full test results can raise a red flag that’s not apparent on the face of a summary. Once again, a look at the relationship between USADA and Floyd Mayweather is instructive.

 

On Dec. 30, 2009, Manny Pacquiao sued Mayweather for defamation. Pacquiao’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for Nevada, alleged that Mayweather and several other defendants had falsely accused him of using, and continuing to use, illegal performance enhancing drugs. The court case moved slowly, as litigation often does. Then things changed dramatically.

As reported by this writer on MaxBoxing in Dec. 2012, information filtered through the drug-testing community on May 20, 2012 to the effect that Mayweather had tested positive on three occasions for an illegal performance-enhancing drug. More specifically, it was rumored that Mayweather’s “A” sample had tested positive three times and, after each positive test, USADA had given Floyd an inadvertent use waiver. These waivers, if they were in fact given, would have negated the need to test Floyd’s “B” samples. And because the “B” samples were never tested, a loophole in Mayweather’s USADA contract would have allowed testing to continue without the positive “A” sample results being reported to Mayweather’s opponent or the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Pacquiao’s attorneys became aware of the rumor in late-May. On June 4, 2012, they served document demands and subpoenas on Mayweather, Mayweather Promotions, Golden Boy (Mayweather’s co-promoter), and USADA demanding the production of all documents relating to PED testing of Mayweather in conjunction with his fights against Shane Mosley, Victor Ortiz, and Miguel Cotto. These were the three fights that Mayweather had been tested for by USADA up until that time.

The documents were not produced. After pleading guilty to charges of domestic violence and harassment, Mayweather spent nine weeks in the Clark County Detention Center. He was released from jail on Aug. 2. Then settlement talks heated up.

A stipulation of settlement ending the defamation case was filed with the court on Sept. 25, 2012. The parties agreed to a confidentiality clause that kept the terms of settlement secret. However, prior to the agreement being signed, two sources with detailed knowledge of the proceedings told this writer that Mayweather’s initial monetary settlement offer was “substantially more” than Pacquiao’s attorneys had expected it would be. An agreement in principle was reached soon afterward. The settlement meant that the demand for documents relating to USADA’s testing of Mayweather became moot.

If Mayweather’s “A” sample tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug on one or more occasions and he was given a waiver by USADA that concealed this fact from the Nevada State Athletic Commission, his opponent, and the public, it could contribute to a scandal that undermines the already-shaky public confidence in boxing. At present, the relevant information is not a matter of public record.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart (through senior communications manager Annie Skinner) declined to state how many times the “A” sample of a professional boxer tested by USADA has come back positive for a prohibited substance