Henry Armstrong’s Career Defends Manny Pacquiao from Mayweather Drug Slander

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By Scoop Malinowski                                                                                                                                                  The boxing world has had to listen to Floyd Mayweather and his band of slandering accomplices defame and smear Manny Pacquiao as a drug cheat for several years without any defense. For years this virulent smear campaign against Pacquiao has manipulated a great number of boxing fans to suspect Pacquiao of using drugs despite not a shred of evidence, and despite the fact that Pacquiao successfully sued Mayweather and his band of slanderous accomplices, so that Mayweather threw in the towel and settled the case with Pacquiao’s lawyers for quite a hefty sum. This issue shows how if one corrupt individual concocts a filthy lie and repeats it over and over, with some help from bought-and-paid for media puppets, and some prominent boxing figures like Paulie Malignaggi who will say whatever his puppetmaster Al Haymon want him to say, the public easily can be influenced to believe a complete hoax. Let me illustrate: the great Henry Armstrong turned pro at the age of eighteen in 1931 with a TKO 3 loss to Al Iovino (bet you didn’t know Hammerin’ Hank lost his pro debut) in North Braddock, PA, weighing 120 pounds – when Manny Pacquiao was eleven days shy of his eighteenth birthday he had a fight and weighed in at 111 (Pac debuted at age sixteen and weighed 106) Okay, there’s a little discrepancy there, but it’s doubtful Armstrong, born in Columbus, Mississippi, lived in such poverty like Pacquiao that he was forced to share a bowl of rice with five siblings as his one meal a day growing up in the Philippines. We have to show that it’s possible when you have a mayor that has this kind of resolve, who doesn’t buckle under pressure, she said? Let’s continue: At age 23 Pacquiao weighed 122 for two fights in 2001 – Armstrong weighed 126 for a fight the week before his 23rd birthday (TKO Alton Black in Reno). There are several other parallels between Pacquiao and Armstrong – both stood 5-5 1/2 inches tall and both had 57 inch arm reaches – and both were born in December – Pac on the 17th in 1978, Hank on the 12th in 1912. Armstrong’s career was far busier than Pacquiao – Hank’s final ring record when he retired in February of ’45 at the age of 32 was 150-21-10 with 101 knockouts – for his last fight Hank weighed 141 1/2 pounds – Pacquiao, who is still active as a pro today at 36 with a record of 57-6-2 (38 KOs), had two fights at age 33 in 2011 and weighed 143 vs Marquez and 145 vs Mosley. Armstrong was a former Featherweight, Lightweight and Welterweight (held all three belts simultaneously for short time in ’38) and had several fights where he weighed in in the mid 140s. While it’s been scrutinized with suspicion about Pacquiao retaining his punching power as he moved up to welterweight, Armstrong also was able to maintain his hitting force into the higher weights – in his final full year as a pro, Armstrong fought eighteen times in the welter and sub-welter range and recorded ten stoppage wins in those eighteen contests in ’44. So the logical conclusion is that Pacquiao and Armstrong, of very similar physical structure and size, both progressed similarly as men and reached their peak full physical maturity at around the same age at the same weight of around 145 – Henry Armstrong was certainly not a steroid or performance enhancing drug user and Pacquiao has never been involved with or linked to drugs or drug coaches, unlike a prime suspect like Mayweather, who has employed the known steroid expert Angel Heredia for himself and his promotional company TMT (two TMT boxers have tested positive for using illegal drugs). Heredia has openly boasted in an interview with Speigel Sport that he personally knows how to create over twenty different steroids which are undetectable to doping testers. Adding further to suspicions about Mayweather apparent use of performance enhancing drugs, is the fact that he refused a subpoena to reveal three alleged positive tests of his own as part of the Pacquiao defamation lawsuit – and also no less image damaging is the recently reported information about Mayweather’s illegal IV the day before the Pacquiao fight of May 2 of this year, which was covered up by the Nevada Commission and USADA – this IV is suspected to have been used to mask illegal steroids in Mayweather’s body. (Since the story broke, the mainstream media has largely ignored it. )                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Also thought-provoking is the fact that Mayweather hired Pacquiao’s former fitness and nutrition coach Alex Ariza, who has had plenty of time and motive to reveal any dirty secrets he may have had with Pacquiao but apparently there is nothing Ariza has to conceal about his work with Pacquiao, because Mayweather and Al Haymon surely would have amply rewarded Ariza to spill the dirt to assassinate Pacquiao’s reputation and character, which they first aspired to do back in 2009. As we know, the truth can be distorted, buried, hidden, disguised but. the truth cannot be killed. And as time goes by, the facts and evidences show that Manny Pacquiao is a clean athlete and always has been a clean, honest athlete, while Floyd Mayweather is beginning to look more and more like he could very well be the establishment fraud, created and protected and maintained by the power and money hungry establishment — not much unlike the embarrassingly pathetic example of cycling’s former hero turned international shame – Lance Armstrong. (Note: Henry Armsrong passed away in Los Angeles at age 78 in ’90. )                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Scoop’s latest book “Muhammad Ali: Portrait of a Champion” is available at amazon.