LOS ANGELES – Juan Manuel Marquez isn’t done fighting, and this time it may involve Manny Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach who previously alleged that the Mexican is into illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
Marquez, who scored a dramatic sixth-round knockout of Pacquiao in Las Vegas last Dec. 8, is considering filing a defamation case against Roach.
If he does, then Roach will face the same case that Pacquiao filed against Floyd Mayweather Jr. a couple of years ago after the American boxer insinuated that the Filipino superstar is into something.
That case has already been dropped.
Roach said days before the fight that Marquez could be into illegal enhancers, but after the news spread, the five-time Trainer of the Year offered a retraction, and said he was only joking.
“Roach told me if I would come out clean in the anti-doping tests, he would kiss my ass,” Marquez was quoted by www.boxingscene.com as saying.
“The Nevada Commission has announced that both Pacquiao and I were negative for doping. That means Roach has to kiss my ass, and then some. He openly said that I had doped, and now he has to pay the consequences,” said Marquez.
After the fight, Roach offered no excuses for the loss after Marquez, already 39 but with the body of a high school track star, knocked Pacquiao out with a perfect right straight with only one second left in the sixth round.
“It was a great knockout. No excuses. Marquez won the fight,” said Roach.
But it seems that Marquez can’t forgive and forget, and if people close to him push the Mexican counterpuncher into going to court then he might just do it.
Much of the suspicion that Marquez is into PEDs is tied to the presence of Angel Hernandez in Team Marquez as strength and conditioning coach.
Hernandez is the same conditioning expert who once admitted peddling illegal enhancers to track stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. He never went to jail after offering his testimony in court.
Hernandez said Marquez and Pacquiao being cleared by the Nevada Athletic Commission of any illegal drugs following tests administered after the fight should clear the air.
“Like I said in the beginning we haven’t done anything that is illegal and the results show today. A lot of rumors in the past have been done against Manny and Marquez today,” he told Pinoy scribes.
“You cannot judge anybody by association or judge anybody of being drugs positive when there is none. This should clear the air,” Hernandez added.