Stop the boxing world, I want to get off.
Paranoia runs deep, they say, into your heart it will creep. But it’s not the paranoid people in boxing who are getting to me.
It’s the suspicious minds on this drug cheating allegations which started by focusing on Manny Pacquiao but now have spead like a nasty virus.
When I heard what Naughty Boy Paulie Malignaggi, a loud and constant Pacman skeptic, said on The Boxing Truth radio show, I was going to suggest a public spanking.
But I didn’t go with my original knee jerk reaction, I waited until I had a second thought and a third one. I am glad I did because Malignaggi’s comments directed at his May 15 foe and Pacquiao Wild Card Gym colleague Amir Khan aren’t wrongful.
Most people won’t admit it but Malignaggi was frank enough to say that the conditioning coach Alex Ariza’s connection between Pacman and the Bolton Wanderer has him wondering if young Khan might be using PEDs.
In boxing now, to be accused is to be convicted on PEDs. If you are a pro fighter making big money, you are guilty until proven innocent. It’s a Franz Kafka world.
Maliganggi didn’t throw a blanket of drug suspicion over Khan but he said he “thinks outside the box” on a lot of issues and this is one of them.
In a Freudian slip, in the same interview with Ricardo Lois, our LA Boxing Examiner who doubles as the BT Radio grillmaster, Malignaggi was discussing his performance “regressed” when he was trained by ex-world champ James “Buddy” McGirt.
(Hogan Photos/Golden Boy)
“If you don’t enhance yourself, you will regress, not progress,” Malignaggi said.
So the voluble Brooklyn lad was able to work “performance” and “enhance” into the same answer even when not addressing boxing’s drug problem.
Yo Paulie picked his words carefully, not referring to Ariza but to Amir and Manny having “the same team” around them.
“I don’t supect Amir Khan of anything except training clean and fighting clean,” Malignaggi said.
If you think Maliganggi is alone on this, you’re so wrong. His handler Lou DiBella is only paranoid when he is awake so he is also scratching his chin and musing about Khan playing dirty because of the Team Pacquiao connection.
But, in the interests of getting along with Khan handler Golden Boy, this time Volcanic Lou will proably not erupt.
“I’d be lying,” Malignaggi said, “if I told you I wasn’t suspicious. If I told you, it wasn’t on my mind, I’d be lying.”
Malignaggi has had multiple hand surgeries. Does he use anything to deaden hand pain, anything which might be illegal in some boxing jurisdictions?
I’d be lying if I told that thought didn’t cross my alleged mind about this Pacquiao/Ariza accuser.
Guess I’ve got a suspicious mind as well.
I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Antonio Margarito had loaded handwraps in other bouts, perhaps he he jackhammerred Miguel Cotto, but I’ve got no proof.
Everyone is painting with too broad a brush.
Nothing has been proven about Pacquiao or Ariza. The sum total of evidence against both is ZERO.
Ditto for Khan who acquired his “guilt” by mere association.
But, in the rush to judgment court of public opinion, the verdict is clear.
Why wouldn’t Pacquiao or any other boxer cheat if he thought he could get away with it and earn big money in the process?
Fighters are not morally superior to cyclists in the Tour de France or the various track and field competitors who have been nabbed cheating.
I don’t think Malignaggi needs to go into the penalty box. He doesn’t need a trip to the woodshed for some corporal punishment, either.
The only “crime” he has committed is that of being brutally honest.
