Pacquiao vs Marquez: Freddie Roach Wrong to Dismiss Drug Testing for Pac-Man

Of all people, Freddie Roach, the famed boxing trainer and the man charged with preparing Manny Pacquiao for his third fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, should know better than to pooh-pooh the need for drug testing in a sport that needs all the credibility it can muster.

Doping concerns have dogged the fighters since it was discovered that one of Marquez's coaches, Angel Hernandez, was a former Balco employee working under an assumed name.

But that doesn't seem to matter to Roach, who's been around boxing since his childhood. He was himself a professional fighter in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has been working as a trainer since 1986. Instead, Roach has dismissed any recommendations of drug testing as "distractions," telling Malaya Business Insight:

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"This comes more as a distraction to Manny. Manny has gone from so many distractions in his previous fights and in this. I don’t think he would mind it. We don’t really mind it. A lot of people want to point fingers and say Marquez is doing bad things and that he should undergo drug test before the fight. But I won’t do that because I’ve been tired of that being done to me, to Manny, especially."

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Of course, Roach is missing the point. It's not about it being a distraction, but rather about rewarding the public trust and, hopefully, reassuring those legions of sports fans who are going to pay good money to watch this fight on pay-per-view that what they're seeing isn't just another doped-up freak show.

Then again, it's not as though most people actually care what these guys are putting in their bodies or doing to themselves. After all, we're tuning in to see two guys beat the living daylights out of each other for our own enjoyment, which is pretty twisted in its own right.

What exactly is supposed to be clean about a sport in which the highest achievement is hitting your opponent in the head so hard that he's no longer mentally competent enough to carry on.

But I digress. Roach seemed to gloss over the issue as though it were just about Marquez and not also, or even chiefly, about his own guy:

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"Manny is ready to fight even today and no amount of bad news would detract from doing what has to be done come fight night. Not even claims saying Marquez (on drugs) would put Manny at a disadvantage."

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Really, Freddie? You'd think that a man as knowledgeable and well-versed in the boxing world as Roach would know better than to suggest that his sport doesn't need testing. With the proliferation of performance-enhancing drugs throughout the sports world in this day and age, EVERY form of competition short of chess and polo needs to do everything it can to ensure that its participants aren't doing anything illegal to gain an advantage while hurting themselves and their competitors.

The issue of doping isn't a "distraction" to be brushed aside simply because Floyd Mayweather Jr. and his people have been so adamant about it as a sticking point for a "Fight of the Century." It's a serious concern for a sport that has long been a bastion of seedy activity among everyone involved, from fighters to trainers to promoters to bookies and beyond.

If Freddie Roach truly has Manny Pacquiao's best interests at heart—and he damn well should, considering all the money Pac-Man has made for him—then he must encourage, not discourage, his biggest client to get it over with, to submit to a battery of tests now and put to bed any concerns that Pacquiao is juiced.

Otherwise, the court of public opinion, known for assuming guilt until innocence is proven, will continue to evaluate Pacquiao, and most every boxer, with the sort of sneaking suspicion that the fledgling sport doesn't need.