By Rob Smith: For those fans who were hoping that Juan Manuel Marquez would test positive for performance enhancing drugs so that it would help deflate the impact of his impressive knockout performance against Manny Pacquiao, they got bad news today with the Nevada State Athletic Commission revealing that Marquez – and Pacquiao’s – tests came up negative for PEDs. The only thing you can say now is that Marquez beat Pacquiao fair and square on his talent alone. He did get help with his training with his excellent trainer Nacho Beristain and other team members such as strength and conditioning coach Angel Heredia, but there’s nothing illegal with what Marquez did.
Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Keith Kizer said to ESPN “Steroid and drug test results came back negative for all prohibited substances.”
Both fighters were tested before and after the fight with urine tests. However, there wasn’t any random blood testing for this fight, as it’s not standard in Nevada. Something like that would have to be pushed by one of the fighters and they would have had to agree on it, but neither found it necessary.
The win was especially sweet for Marquez because he’d fought Pacquiao on three other occasions and lost two of the fights with the first bout ending in a 12 round draw. Marquez contends that he won all three fights, and a lot of boxing fans wouldn’t argue with. A lot of fans feel Marquez was robbed three times against Pacquiao, and that he needed a knockout last Saturday just to make sure he got the win.
Marquez worked really hard with Heredia on the past year on strength and conditioning exercises, and it really showed with his physique. Marquez looked well-muscled for the fight and he seemed to have more power as well, because he knocked Pacquiao flat in the third from a single shot, and then in the 6th, Marquez knocked Pacquiao flat again with another right hand. He wasn’t knocking Pacquiao down an accumulation of shots like most knockouts occur. Marquez was dropping Pacquiao like he was a miniature Julian Jackson in there, and you have to figure that his new muscles played a big part in his ability to hurt Pacquiao with single shots, because he’d never done that before in his fights with Pacquiao.