Juan Manuel Marquez Shrugs off Doubts, Focuses on Pacquiao

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.

http://www.usada.org/uploads/6-25-10%20Arbitrator%20Award%20110.pdf

“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.”

While Victor Conte, who now works with several top fighters, did time in prison for his involvement in BALCO, he never testified against anyone else, instead owning up to his crime. Heredia became a key witness in several cases. In a documentary on German TV, Heredia demonstrated for the cameras how easy it was to procure EPO (a blood doping agent) in Mexico City and also how to use it. He did this by injecting it into his own stomach. The documentary came out in 2009 and can be seen via the following links:

A video from Germany of Angel Heredia documentary where he injects EPO into his stomach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0GbnVdWaIU&feature=player_embedded

Part one of a German documentary on doping in sports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN4g4liR4Pw&feature=related

Part two, featuring Angel Heredia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjiWoEOSpCI&feature=related

Part three:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjiWoEOSpCI&feature=related

Part four:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyAyl2_n_pI&feature=related

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.

You can email Gabriel at maxgmontoya@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gabriel_montoya and catch him on each Monday’s episode of “The Next Round” with Steve Kim. You can also tune in to hear him and co-host David Duenez live on the BlogTalk radio show Leave-It-In-The-Ring.com, Thursdays at 5-8 PM PST. Gabriel is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.

Source: maxboxing.com