After two
fights deemed classics by fight fans and writers around the world, Juan Manuel
Marquez is still searching for that clear win over Manny Pacquiao. Though
only the knockdowns scored by Pacquiao separate the two men, knowing he came
close in scoring a draw the first time and losing a close decision the second is
simply not enough for Marquez. So at age 38, four years after their last
encounter (the first happened at 126 pounds, the last at 130), Marquez moves up
to 144 pounds (a catchweight agreed upon by Pacquiao since Marquez is currently
a lightweight) to give it one last go.
“I believe
this is the best training camp he has had in his whole career and we are going
to give Pacquiao a great fight,” said Marquez’s trainer Nacho Beristain.
“Without question, we have prepared ourselves to win this fight again. They can
say what they want. They are great trainers and he is a great fighter. If they
feel they won the first two fights, so be it – we feel the same way and that’s
the way you should go into a fight.”
“That’s why we
are doing this third fight,” said Marquez. “The first two were very close and
this fight should end all doubt. We are not the only ones saying we won the
fights. There are a lot of fans and media out there saying the same thing- that
we won those two fights.”
At this stage
of their careers, both men’s abilities are clearly defined. Pacquiao has fought
a slew of well-matched fights against bigger men past their primes in title-winning
affairs, moving on from the last Marquez fight to 135, 140, 147 and finally, a
150 pound catchweight fight with Antonio Margarito. Along the way, as he faced
these bigger men, he began to develop his right hand lead style and learned to
effectively learned how to use his feet, jab, and right hook. Pacquiao has also
proven to be able to take a solid punch at the higher weights.
Marquez went
on to become the lightweight champion and defended the title in grueling
affairs with Juan Diaz (the first time. A rematch was a shutout win for
Marquez) and Michael Katsidis (Marquez would dominate the action but get
dropped early on only to stop Katsidis late). Marquez moved up to welterweight to
face Floyd Mayweather in a 144-pound catchweight fight. While Mayweather
changed the weight the week of the fight to make it a full welterweight fight,
the point was a moot. Two weight classes north of his optimum weight, Marquez looked
flat, slow and simply ineffective. This time around, Beristain feels it will be
different.
“I think
Pacquiao has become a better technician as a boxer,” said Beristain. “I think
Marquez has become more mature as a fighter and now fights at a higher level
and has gotten better. At his age, sometime you wonder if he is focused for the
fight but I know that he is – he’s always going to be focused and he’s always
going to be ready for a fight. We are looking to give you guys a great fight
and he’ll fight like he’s 24. I think Pacquiao’s punches are thrown technically
better – he is not as wild as he used to be. He looks like he knows what he is
doing and that is a direct impact of Freddie Roach. He is throwing a much
better right hook.”
Marquez felt that
moving up in weight hurt him but that the style of Mayweather had as much to do
with the shutout loss as anything.
“I had
problems moving up but I would rather fight Pacquiao three or four more times
than fight Mayweather once,” said Marquez. “Mayweather is a defensive fighter –
he doesn’t let you fight but we know Pacquiao comes to fight and he is a spectacular
fighter. He is always going to give you a fight and that’s why I know it will
be a war between us.”
There is no
question that when Pacquiao and Marquez step into the ring on Saturday night at
the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, fireworks will go off. How long it lasts is
anyone’s guess. It says here that this is a mismatch at this weight and age and
that Marquez will be knocked out cold in eight rounds.
However, there
will be one question in the minds of everyone paying attention to the
promotion: Why did Marquez employ the services of one Angel Hernandez AKA Angel
Heredia? If you don’t know who he is, Heredia was the key witness in the BALCO
case as well as the 2003 case against track-and-field coach Trevor Graham, who
trained runners Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery among others. Graham anonymously
sent a syringe containing an illegal substance developed by BALCO to the United
States Anti-Doping Agency. The man Graham had been working with to allegedly
get PEDs like EPO, HGH (Human Growth Hormone) and testosterone was Heredia,
who would eventually turn state’s evidence on both Graham and BALCO founder
Victor Conte.
It is
interesting to note, however, that while the case began in 2003 and Heredia
gave testimony all through that time, he may have still been dealing illegal
substances.
As revealed in
an arbitration document from the USADA, Angel “Memo” Heredia testified in a
case against Olympic sprinter and coach Raymond Stewart (once coached by Glenn
Mills, current coach of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt) in 2010 that he supplied drugs to
Stewart and his athletes for a decade.
“The arbitrator is comfortably satisfied
that Raymond Stewart regularly dealt with ‘Memo,’ an admitted drug supplier to
the track and field world in order to secure drugs which were prohibited by
WADA, for use by athletes that he coached and trained,” reads the USADA
arbitration document.
“The relationship between these men
spanned ten years while Stewart held himself out to the world as a coach of
track and field at elite levels and all the while he knew he was regularly
communicating with a known drug dealer trafficking in performance enhancing
drugs,” the document also reads. That period, according to the document, began
sometime around 1996.
One question
that comes to mind is why was Heredia allegedly dealing PEDs while serving as a
key witness in major performance-enhancing drug cases? When did Heredia become
an informant? He later told USADA he was dealing PEDs as late as 2006. This was
around the same period he was testifying against Graham and Stewart. The BALCO
case was in 2003 and according to this article, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/the-chemist-of-mexico-comes-clean/story-e6frg7mo-1111116309112,
the lead prosecutor in the BALCO case,
Jeff Novitsky, did not get hold of Heredia until March of 2005. In this regard,
someone’s got to provide some answers.
Another question would be, why use
Heredia at all? Ignorance of his past was one excuse given.
“I just know that when I met him, his
background was with elite athletes,” said Marquez. “We discussed what I needed
to do. I didn’t find out anything about this stuff that has been written until
the last few days. It was big news to me but it is a shame because of all the
work I have done and preparation has been thrown into the trash can by this guy
Conte and [Alex] Ariza by saying these things. I worked very hard but I’m
not going to stop training for the fight. Whatever testing they want to do-
blood or Olympic- I am ready to do it. We’ll do it, no problem, as long as he
does it too.”
Part two, featuring Angel Heredia:
Part three:
Part four:
The documentary and the information
provided by Heredia in this transcript of the documentary interview here, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,571031,00.html,
makes the following comment by Top Rank promoter Bob Arum seem woefully
uninformed at best about the potential problem of performance-enhancing drugs
in boxing.
“Many of you are really behind the
times,” said Arum in an attempt to squash all suspicion of Heredia on a recent
conference call. “Conte and Hernandez were implicated in the use of
steroids in the so-called BALCO case. The two of them are the least to be
involved in steroids since they have learned their lesson. Secondly, people who
understand getting athletes ready know now that you don’t use steroids, not
because [athletes] are good guys but because naturally, supplements, used
correctly, have the same effect of steroids without the bad part- without the
rage and the future health concerns. So the conditioners who know what they are
doing wouldn’t touch steroids because they are not as effective as the natural
substances and the sophisticated training methods now used. You are talking
about things that existed five or ten years ago that are not currently being
used.”
Now does this mean Marquez looked for an
illegal edge in this fight? No. In fact, Marquez himself said he would be
willing to do any sort of testing the Pacquiao camp wanted. Team Pacquiao said
they had no problem with Marquez working with Heredia. Recently, Arum was
quoted as saying he was open to Pacquiao using USADA testing for a possible
Floyd Mayweather fight.
So where does that leave us? With a
fight on HBO PPV between two men who know each other as well as any two
fighters can. Will it be a war? Possibly. Will Marquez win? Certainly Beristain
believes the new condition his fighter is in will help.
“I have the most respect for the work
[Heredia] has done for us,” said Beristain. “When Juan Manuel comes to the gym,
he has the power and energy – a guy that I know I can work with and will be
ready. That’s why I think we will win the fight. I have the utmost respect for
what he has done and how Juan has responded to his work.”
With the Nevada State Athletic
Commission being far outdated when compared to USADA year-round testing that includes
blood and urine evaluation, if Heredia was up to anything at all, we would
never know anyway. All we have is the word of a man who changed his name and
refused to be interviewed about his past by a Maxboxing.com reporter.
Does this taint the fight? To most
viewers, most likely not. Pacquiao is a celebrity on a superstar level. Marquez
is a near-living legend fighter beloved by all of Mexico. Their respective
trainers are thought of as gods by the boxing world and are both in the Hall of
Fame. In the end, it will be a fight like any other.
It
says here that what the fight will represent is a call for better testing in
boxing. That way, what some deem as unfair criticism of a coach or trainer and
their methods will be cleared by the best drug testing the world has to offer:
year round, in competition, out of competition, and in-between, random blood
and urine testing. Nothing tailor-made to a training camp when most athletes
who use PEDs generally do their dirty business in the off-season anyway. We
need a separate body that governs this part of our sport and that does not take
money directly from the parties involved. The sport has enough problems without
adding more conflicts of interest.
