By Marcus Richardson: Undefeated WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley says he doesn’t mind if they have Olympic style random blood testing for performance enhancing drugs for his May 5th fight against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. Bradley, 28, says he has no problems whatsoever with that kind of drug testing, and he’s okay with it if they do implement it. However, it doesn’t look as if that’s going to happen, as there isn’t any random blood testing that will be done for the Pacquiao-Bradley fight.
Bradley told RingTV “I don’t need any steroids. This is all natural right here…I’m confident in my abilities. I don’t care what you take, you won’t beat me…It’s all natural over here with Tim Bradley.”
The drug testing got in the way of Pacquiao’s first attempts at putting together a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2010, when Mayweather asked for random blood testing to be done up until two weeks before the fight, but Pacquiao wanted it to stop several weeks before the fight due him feeling weakened slightly when having blood drawn from his body. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach was against the testing close to the fight, as he felt that he’d not have Pacquiao at full strength for a couple days after the blood draw. What eventually happened was Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, decided to move on and match Pacquiao with one of his Top Rank fighters Joshua Clottey in what turned out to be a rather dull fight with Pacquiao easily beating Clottey by a 12 round decision. The opportunity to make a fight with Mayweather was lost, and the two fighters haven’t been close to making a fight since then.
Recently, Mayweather said he’d fight Pacquiao if he agreed to take less than a 50-50 deal. That obviously wasn’t going to fly, which is why Arum is matched Pacquiao with another one of his Top Rank fighters in 28-year-old Bradley next month.
The drug testing likely won’t come up for Bradley in this fight with Pacquiao, but it will be if Pacquiao ever is able to successfully negotiate a fight with Mayweather. If Bradley beats Pacquiao next month, then it really won’t matter because there won’t be a Mayweather-Pacquiao fight unless Mayweather is open to fighting Pacquiao off of a loss. Pacquiao’s major concern would be to try and avenge his loss to Bradley, and that would put off any possibilities for a Mayweather fight. The silver lining to all of this would be that Pacquiao would also have to agree to taking less than a 50-50 deal with Mayweather if Bradley beats Pacquiao. Even if Pacquiao were to avenge the loss to Bradley, he would have a tough time trying to justify that he deserves a 50-50 deal with Mayweather.