Today is to be a big day for Floyd Mayweather. A break out day. The Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) is holding hearings on all things drug testing. Everything is on the table.
Currently Nevada only tests for urine, not blood for its boxers. But that could all change.
Floyd Mayweather, who has maybe a couple of fights left in his entire career might be the big winner because he wants random blood-testing. Of course he doesn’t explain how it’s going to be paid for, organized and handled when so many fights are put together at the last minute.
Of course the main event can be planned months ahead but the undercards are usually helter skelter.
You just can’t change the rules in the middle of the game with no accountability for it. Pacquiao should never give in to USADA or Mayweather demands on principle only.
I have spoken of Travis Tygart, of the opportunistic United States Anti-Doping-Agency (USADA) here a few times. He has called me out as not knowing the facts. But he can’t handle the real truth as I have just presented it.
Tygart calls Mayweather a “clean athlete” but doesn’t say that about Manny Pacquiao. Tygart won’t acknowledge that Pacquiao has passed every test ever given to him in different countries and states throughout his career.
But Mayweather is a client so his opponent must be the “dirty” guy according to Tygart.
Tygart wrote me one day and said he wanted to talk. He had made a few pointed insults toward me as I did him in my major article about him. Anyway He asked for my phone number (which I gave him) and I gave him the best times to reach me during the next week. But he never called me back.
What Tygart doesn’t get is that boxing is different than anything else. Not better, probably worse, but certainly different. Tygart’s standard questions don’t grasp the depths of boxing’s history and nuances. Fighters have cultural differences and neither is wrong or right but Tygart called one clean and not the other.
Boxing is a sport of free-lance athletes and free-lance businessmen that sometimes get along and sometimes don’t. Normally if enough money is involved most other differences go away.
If Mayweather vs. Pacquiao is to happen at all and in either Nevada or Texas it would be because the fighters and their promoters are finally ready to cut a deal and get on with it.
I don’t know about today, but someday blood-testing will pass in Nevada and probably nationally. I just hope it doesn’t cause a major fight like Mayweather vs. Pacquiao to not happen.
