I’d been out on business the whole day, which was why I missed the eruption of yet another steroid controversy involving Manny Pacquiao. Like the previous others, it was utter garbage.

It all started with an article on some fly-by-night boxing website, where Pacquiao’s alleged steroid use was confirmed by a former sparring partner, who said he used to inject the gentleman from Sarangani with drugs. Pacquiao’s accuser identified himself as a Filipino, and according to the article, wanted to remain anonymous for fear of backlash from his countrymen.

It was a shady enough that most knowledgeable boxing fans and writers knew enough to just ignore it. But flames of the stupid, stupid issue were fanned after Shane Mosley, who fought Pacquiao last weekend and pissed away his legacy after spending 12 rounds being a big pussy, talked about it on Twitter:



Never to miss an opportunity to publicly bag on Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather tweeted the link to his followers, although it has since been removed from his timeline. But the story flared up so much that both Pacquiao and his trainer, Freddie Roach, had to issue statements to refute the allegations.

Roach told Michael Woods of The Sweet Science that he couldn’t remember the last time Pacquiao had a Filipino sparring partner, and categorically said that there was no Filipino sparring partner in camp during the period when the doping allegedly happened.

Pacquiao, for his part, released this statement:

An anonymous post on an internet forum claims an unidentified former Filipino sparring partner injected me with steroids before my fight with Oscar de la Hoya and in subsequent fights. This is completely false, totally fabricated, and, not surprisingly, leveled by someone who will not even identify himself. I did not even have a Filipino sparring partner during my training for the fight against De La Hoya or for any fight since then.

I have never taken steroids, HGH, or any banned performance-enhancing drug. Period. My success in the ring is due to hard work, belief in God, and the support of my fans. Like every boxer, I am required to take drug tests in connection with every professional fight in the United States. I have passed every one, including my fight against De la Hoya and my most recent victory against Shane Mosley.

I will fight to protect my hard-earned good name and reputation.

My friend Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipino-American journalist and a hardcore boxing fan, tipped me off about the issue. He put it best in an email to me this afternoon:

I've lost total respect for Shane. Not just because of the way he fought but because of his tweeting today of the unfounded rumor of Pac's steroid use, which Floyd then re-tweeted to his 1.3 million followers. Dastardly. Cowardly. I'm now convinced that Pac would knock out Mayweather if they should ever meet in the ring.

I suspect that murmurs of Pacquiao’s steroid use will continue on because of how he has apparently moved up the weight classes, even though there has been extensive work debunking the notion that his growth has been anything out of the ordinary. A few months ago, Leandro Solis wrote an excellent article explaining why the idea of Pacquiao being a small guy is a myth. Last year, Avi “Shoefly” Korine of The Sporting News also tracked the weight gain of Pacquiao compared to other fighters, and while his article is no longer available online, his comparative graph, which shows how normal the Filipino champ’s growth has been, was salvaged: