GUEST POST
Mayweather
on the Money with Drug-Testing Call
By
Ronnie Duncan
Eight-time world champion Floyd "Money" Mayweather has put himself in position to be considered the very best to
ever lace on a pair of boxing gloves. With his flawless
record of 43 victories and no defeats, “Money May” is poised to
cash in big time tonight
when
he faces Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of at least equal importance, the fighter once known as “Pretty
Boy Floyd” no longer needs to apologize for his battle against the use of performance enhancing drugs in boxing. In fact,
the boxing world owes Mayweather a standing ovation for giving his sport a much-needed
facelift.
Mayweather
has used verbal jabs every bit as swift and sharp as
his boxing combinations to expose his sport's many fraudulent overnight biological sensations. His
campaign to have Olympic-style
drug testing administered across the board in boxing was at first met
with denunciation and resistance by an army of detractors, including many columnists and commentators. They ridiculed his assertions that many boxing stars were using performance-enhancing drugs [PEDs] that conferred an unfair advantage inside the ropes, and for his refusal to fight
under the terms of the current rules.
Mayweather also lost a fistful of dollars in a
defamation of character lawsuit brought against him by Manny
Pacquiao, the former world champion whom Mayweather identified as
a fighter that he suspected of using PEDs. Mayweather suspected that Pacquiao, once referred to as his “only real
challenge”, was achieving his powerful knockout without the benefits of drug enhancements.
Ironically, after Pacquiao
finally
agreed to random drug testing in recent bouts, he lost his last two fights.
Last
December he was
knocked out cold last December by Juan Manuel Marquez with a single punch
that could have been a commercial for an insomnia cure. That "Pacman" Pacquiao is likely never to be the same fighter after that beatdown is powerful supporting testimony for Mayweather's assertions.
The sports world has been
poisoned by PEDs from the football’s Lyle Alzado to cycling’s Lance
Armstrong to baseball’s Mark McGuire, Alex Rodriquez, and Roger Clemens to boxing’s own Andre
Berto and Sugar Shane Mosley. Denial has constantly been on the lips of
these so-called icons who have claimed to be clean while turning
their sport into a travesty of lies and deception.
Why
would anyone scorn at the notion that boxing's most flamboyant and
colorful star would be right?
Perhaps we need to question ourselves and not criticize Floyd Mayweather for who we think he is or who we want him to be.
Floyd has often said, “I just want an even
playing field so everyone knows there is no cheating”. Perhaps
if he had been Oscar De La Hoya, or an Ivy League graduate or maybe even if he just had wind-blown hair, he
would been taken seriously.
From my vantage, it is a low blow to see Mayweather — who should be the face of boxing — insulted and ridiculed
just for being an honest product of his
environment.
Even
as I write this piece no boxing commission in the United States has sanctioned
a drug testing procedure close to the one that Mayweather demands be included in every contract he signs.
Boxing might be fixed as many say. But no one can say Floyd "Money" Mayweather is dirty! He's as clean as a newly minted Benjamin Franklin.
3-2-1
I am done.
Ronnie Duncan, a
sportscaster currently living and working in Washington DC, previously worked
in Cleveland for a host of outlets, including WOIO/WUAB and Village Television,
as well as WKNR and WERE radio.
