True, Pacquiao could take some of the heat off simply by taking and passing some extra damn blood tests. Just to recap, though, here are a couple of good, reasonable, possible explanations why he has thus far declined:
1) Even clean athletes can fail drug tests by eating certain foods or taking certain harmless medications like cold medicines and anti-inflammatories. Or there could simply be human error on the testers' end. In most cases, such false-positives would be cleaned up pretty quickly and athletes would be absolved of wrongdoing. However, in Pacquiao's case, there's been too much meddling by the Mayweather camp. Should Pacquiao fail despite a complete lack of illegal drug-use, there'd be less allowances. He'd be immediately demonized and all his accomplishments would lose lustre.
2) Manny has a well-documented superstition against blood-drawing immediately preceding a fight. Here's a video, 5-years-old, 5-years prior to any negotiations with Mayweather, where Manny explains his fear.
(english translation here)
Reasonable or not, Pacquiao has a responsibility, as a fighter, to go into a fight with his mind right even if it means not submitting to drug-testing deemed unnecessary by the rules.
A lot of simple-minded sports fans read this situation solely as PED-related. Understandably so. PEDs destroyed professional baseball, basically 25% of major North American sports. Now, any unprecedented feat, any superhuman athlete is subject to, at the very least, a healthy dose of suspicion. There's all those whispers about Bolt, James, Phelps, and Armstrong. No one should be too, too surprised that Pacquiao is now on that list. (However, I would argue that while Pacquiao's recent accomplishments are as great as those of any of the above athletes, they are not as unprecedented as, say, 8 swimming golds in a single Olympics, or a 9.578-second 100-meter. Sure, Pacquiao's 4 knockout victories from lightweight (135 pounds) to welterweight (147 pounds) are impressive, especially since he began fighting as a 16-year-old 106 pound-er. Equally impressive is the other past pound-for-pound champ who began fighting as a 106-pound 16-year-old, and who also has 4 highlight-reel ko victories between lightweight and welterweight: Floyd Mayweather Jr.)
Not to diminish the importance of PEDs, but the more important issue (no proof, remember?) is the attack on Pacquiao's reputation. This is beyond any healthy dose of suspicion. It's not just the simple-minded fans who now have doubts about Pacquiao. I don't think it's fair that I, a hard-core fan, can no longer appreciate what Pacquiao's done the same way I had appreciated a month ago. I don't think Pacquiao's done anything illegal, but I don't think, less, if you know what I mean. I'm not hating on Floyd for simply requesting extra testing to protect himself and ensure his safety (if those are, in fact, his real reasons). I'm hating on his camp's smear tactics. The way they've baselessly twisted speculation into slander is shady, code-violating, and just plain wrong.
Floyd Mayweather Sr. has been the loudest with his overt accusations, with Oscar De La Hoya, whose Golden Boy Promotions represents Floyd, a close second. The main man himself, Floyd Jr., "his own boss", is not without sin himself as he infamously stated, during an on-air battle with rapper RA the Rugged Man, that "the Philippines is the producer of the best PEDs". (15:18 mark). If someone dissed me this hard, I'd challenge him to a fight. But a fight is precisely what Mayweather wants so the same punishment shouldn't apply here. Come-uppance, in these pro-boxing circumstances, has to come in another sphere. It's too simplistic to say that Pacquiao should just take the test and try and teach May a lesson in the ring. In that hypothetical, Mayweather gets everything he wants: the fight, 40-million dollars, and a distinct pre-fight mental advantage.
And really, Mayweather deserves much less than that. Floyd Sr., a paid member of his son's camp, poisoned negotiations months ago. Golden Boy, during the actual bargaining process, kept up the poison. Part of any business dealing requires good-faith (or at least the illusion of good faith). Sure, posturing and angling for advantages are parts of every fight negotiation. There is a reasonable threshold, though, for such tactics. I'd argue that publicly asserting the other party is a cheater, without proof, goes beyond that threshold. Not only does it harm Pacquiao's professional reputation, it also affects the negotiations and therefore Pacquiao's livelihood and well-being. A Pacquiao victory in court, maybe a Mayweather retraction/apology, would, in a lot of ways, be worth just as much as a negative drug-test. (Not to be cynical, but any PED-user can really pass any test).
The media, this past week or two, has given Pacquiao a pass and hated on Money because the former's been baselessly accused for drug-use, while the latter's actually guilty of slander and exacerbating fight negotiations. There's an argument that PED-use is the greater sin, but until Manny's actually caught doing something illegal, he should be off the hook, for the most part. And until then, Mayweather and his people deserve the greater part of our scrutiny.
I seem to remember De La Hoya stating that Pacquiao's punches didn't hurt him, he was simply overwhelmed with speed.
Now he's comparing Pac's punches to heavy hitters like Mosley and calling it suspect? Come on.
That's one way to look at that interview. Here's another interpretation that doesn't require us to make excuses for why a grown man is so afraid of needles that he's willing to turn down a 40million-dollar payday. How about: the only time when we any evidence that Manny wasn't doping, he got bodybagged. Then he fougght the same guys without having to take a random blood test and he killed him. Also, what about the fact that this is Manny's third excuse for why he lost. For it was the gloves, then it was the socks. All I'm saying is, if you dug deep enough into the vault, you'd prob'ly find footage of him blaming it on some bad undercooked balut.
Also, why is nobody complaining about Pacquiao wanting to fight Yuri Foreman??!?!? If Mayweather did this, his haters would be calling for him to get sent back to Africa! I'm not saying it's not Manny right to take an easy boring fight. Both men have done it since being crowned number 1. But Floyd's worst opponent was Baldomir. Yuri Foreman take it to a whole new level. At least Baldomir was the linear champ. According to ring magazine, Foreman is ranked number 93 among active fighters. Meanwhile Manny is ducking the number 2 p4p fighter as well as the number 1 contender in Manny's most natural weight class and the weght at which Manny is the linear champ. Coincidentally, both Tim Bradley and Floyd have the speedy, slick style that manny has yet to show he can beat.
Can Manny please just for once fight the top guy in any division? The whole, moving up in weight to fight a shit fighter is getting kind of old and people are starting to see through it. More on that later. Stay tuned...
Since we're on the topic of hypocrits, has anyone noticed that at first Freddie Roach was saying that "Manny will take and pass any test", as well as agreeing to let Manny have blood taken up to a week prior to the fight. Now he's saying Manny's not the one refusing the test, but that HE's the one stopping Manny from taking it. Are you kidding me?!?! The sad thing is that I used to like Pacquiao and I used to respect Roach. Now neither is the case.
false positives can happen at anytime... whether it be at a random test like mayweather wants or at a set time like pacquiao wants. i do not believe the risk of a false positive increases on day 13 compared to day 24 before the fight. if you want to argue that pacquiao will have to take more tests and therefore increase his likelihood of a false positive then your pessimistic outlook on science is kind of scary as the risk for a set of 3 tests compared to one of let's say 5 is probably not as significant as you might think (although i admittingly do not have any data to prove that).
i do not believe that disagreeing with you on this subject makes me "simple-minded" when your first point is not necessarily strong. i just see this drug testing as a small hurdle. im not pacquiao so it is just my opinion that i believe that the pros for doing this fight even with random drug testing should outweigh the possible cons. granted if the tattooed pacquiao really does have a legit fear for needles and believes that a blood test 23 days before the fight will negatively affect him then it's hard to argue with somebody's illogical fears. it is still curious that even though pacquiao has these strong objections to blood tests, his own promoter actually agreed on john mccain as an arbitrator only to have pacquiao nix that agreement.
less arguing an increase of chance, more arguing that there'd be a stronger backlash should he fail despite his being clean since he's been pre-spun to be a cheater. therefore, a reluctance to take more testing especially at the behest of his slanderers.
I'll respond propoerly to this post shortly, but I couldn't leave without saying that Pac's accomplishments are nowhere near Usain Bolt's. Bolt is the best runner in the history of human kind by a wide margin at the age of 21 (Physical peak for sprinters is 29). Pac isn't even on most people's top 10 all time. Doug Fisher doesn't even consider him an all-time great. And Bolt has taken the gold standard of drug testing. Pac has refused.