Manny & Money: Geoff's Gaffes

The current brouhaha on the Olympic Style Drug Testing proposed by the camp of Floyd Mayweather, Jr. on Manny Pacquiao to which the Filipino and current P4P King refused to heed has elicited a lot of controversies that were further fanned by partisan as well as ignorant boxing writers on the subject.

At first, I chose to keep quiet on the matter since I still believed that the megafight between Money and Manny will push through despite all the reports of disagreement and bad press from both sides.

But sometimes I come across articles written by people who simply have no business writing such stuff that merit some retorts lest they continue with their myopic points of view and self- proclaimed knowledge on the subject when in reality they don’t have an iota of expertise on what they are talking about.

We could easily classify them into three classes- simply biased, paid hacks, dumb & dumber.

I will not speculate in what category Geoff Poundes (RingsideReport.com) belongs to, but instead I will leave it up to the readers to put him in his proper place. I read his article the other day entitled “Did Roid Rage Ruin the Manny Pacquiao- Floyd Mayweather Super Fight?”



When reading the said article of this self- proclaimed “Professor,“ I noticed there was nothing of note in it except already known facts and baseless contentions with some “new” malicious lines attributed to a so-called unnamed “Philippine” source.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“ I was apporached recently by a contributor who laid out for me several reasons why he was convinced that Pacquiao was on steroids. His reasons mostly centers around the Pacman’s physique – the argument being that Pacquiao’s muscularity was impossible in the time span and in light of the level of weight gain – and a view of the Philippines and that country’s attitude to competition and fair play. He was a Philippine himself, so I can repeat his assertion that cheating and corruption are endemic in the Philippines in most areas of life (a cursory examination of the political history of Pacquiao’s homeland pretty much tells its own story). “

The Professor’s time in the ring as a referee might have warped his sense of reality and judgment although not a single punch has landed on his head during his long career to even suggest that he is already punched drunk. Maybe it is just endemic that he lacks the requisite grey matter to fully grasp and comprehend the enormity of his theories and beliefs.

Let me just pound on Mr. Poundes’s assertions and assumptions. As if appointing clowns like Paulie Malignaggi and Kermit Cintron as boxing dignitaries was not laughable enough, he compounded his ignorance by referring to his source as well as to Manny Pacquiao as a “Philippine.” For the record, it is a known fact that no such term exists except maybe in the minds of ignorant and uneducated people that proliferate the boxing world. The correct term is FILIPINO.

Once again, he showed his ignorance and lack of knowledge when he asserted that cheating and corruption are endemic in the Philippines. As if the Philippines has a monopoly of those things. I will not go into some historical details about how the British Empire acquired most of its wealth through conquest and plunder, but let me just state the fact that while the Philippines might be a known place for acquiring cheap drugs like methamphetamines and marijuana as well as being the transit point for cocaine and heroin from the Golden Triangle en route to the West, there is no evidence to support that the Filipinos are capable of manufacturing performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), more so of doing systematic sports doping.

It is a fact that Manny Pacquiao has never failed any drug tests administered on him by any sports bodies at any point of his career. It is also of record that NO FILIPINO ATHLETE HAS TESTED POSITIVE OF USING PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS in any sporting event that the country has participated in, which cannot be said of their MORE ILLUSTRIOUS AND HONEST BRITISH COUNTERPARTS like Dwain Chambers, Greg Rusedski, Gary Cadogan, Perriss Wilkins, Doug Walker and LINFORD CHRISTIE (who won gold in the Olympics, World, Commonwealth and European Championships).

I wonder where Professor Geoffs got his education for there is nothing professorial in the way he writes his opus. It is full of gaffes and lacking in substance. In fact, it is a shame that despite being British, he simply doesn’t have the chops nor the flair of the traditional and contemporary English writers like Conan Doyle et al in his veins. It is really very elementary but the sun has long set on the British Empire and its people.