Pacquiao vs. Marquez: PED Connections Make This Fight a Fail for Boxing

Boxing has become such a disaster that even the fights that are supposed to boost the sport end up giving it another black eye.

After years of fixing allegations, bad fights, unappealing champions and a seemingly unstoppable trend of waning interest, this is the last thing boxing needs. But it is exactly what it is getting.

Maybe there are just too many collective blows to the head for this sport to function without the bizarrely destructive judgement of key participants.

It happened in the last big fight when Victor Ortiz began his bewilderingly obsessive hugging of Floyd Mayweather and got unceremoniously knocked out in the process.

And it is happening now.

Juan Marquez's trainer is Angel Hernandez. The problem with this is that Angel Hernandez is also Angel Heredia.

And the problem with Heredia is he likes to pump athletes full of various chemicals before training them. This comes to us from the New York Daily News:

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"According to transcripts of his testimony in 2008 in which he testified against track coach Trevor Graham, Heredia admitted to giving the blood-booster EPO, human growth hormone and insulin to Jones in 2000 at the request of Graham, who was then Jones’ coach. He also said he sold banned substances to Montgomery."

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This doesn't mean that Angel is giving, or helping, Marquez take steroids. But it is hard to draw any other conclusion.

This tells me one of two things: either Juan Marquez is cheating, or he is incredibly foolish.

Why would you have an admitted one-time PED proponent on your training staff? There are plenty of quality trainers without the checkered history that Marquez could have chosen.

There is very little to gain by this move and a lot to lose.

The fact that Heredia tried to disguise his identity only makes things look worse. This only adds credibility to the speculation that Marquez has something to hide with this relationship. 

He wasn't identified to be Heredia until Victor Conte pointed it out after seeing him on HBO's 24/7.

This is just another example of the horribly greedy judgement that is destroying boxing. This fight will not be able to escape the cloud of PED use now. And in the process it further destroys boxing's credibility.