Marquez coach supplied steroids to Marion Jones,Tim Montgomery.
Manny Pacquiao's upcoming fight with Juan Manuel Marquez is surrounded by intrigue as Angel Hernandez, Marquez's new condition coach is fingered in the BALCO case.
Here's the good news for Juan Manuel Marquez, who will face Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas on Nov. 12: His new conditioning coach, Angel Hernandez, isn’t advocating that Marquez drink his own urine as a nutritional supplement, which Marquez did before he fought Floyd Mayweather.
Here’s the bad news for Juan Manuel Marquez: His new conditioning coach, Angel Hernandez, has been identified as Angel (Memo) Heredia, the man who supplied steroids to track stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery and later became the key government witness in the case against BALCO that landed the company’s founder, Victor Conte, behind bars and implicated dozens of athletes as users of performance-enhancing drugs. Hernandez was hiding in plain sight, although he had changed his last name while working with Marquez at his training camp in Mexico. Conte recognized Hernandez on a recent episode of HBO’s boxing reality show “24/7: Pacquiao-Marquez.”
According to transcripts of his testimony in 2008 in which he testified against track coach Trevor Graham, Heredia admitted to giving the blood-booster EPO, human growth hormone and insulin to Jones in 2000 at the request of Graham, who was then Jones’ coach. He also said he sold banned substances to Montgomery.
Heredia walked away without punishment from the feds because he made a deal with IRS agent Jeff Novitzky, who was heading an investigation into steroid distribution, and rolled on others, including Conte and several other athletes.
Conte now works as a conditioning coach for bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire and has re-invented himself as an anti-steroid advocate. He says one difference between himself and Heredia is that Conte paid a heavy price for his misdeeds and Heredia didn’t. “He supplied documents and testimony that were damaging to many athletes,” Conte says. “As a result, Heredia received leniency and walked away from the case a free man.”
Heredia’s presence in Marquez’s camp certainly raises suspicion on what is going on there, because Marquez, a former champion at 126, 130 and 135 pounds, is bulking up to fight at 145 pounds — the most he has ever weighed for a boxing match. He fought against Mayweather at 142 pounds and was battered all over the ring before losing a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision in 2009.
Mayweather has called for random testing for steroids by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. His last two opponents, Shane Mosley and Victor Ortiz, underwent the random testing, and it remains the major hurdle for a match between Mayweather and Pacquiao. The fact that Heredia is working in the Marquez camp highlights the need for random testing by an independent agency, if for no other reason than to allay suspicions that boxing is dirty.
“This is exactly why Floyd has been adamant about testing in boxing,” said Leonard Ellerbe, Mayweather’s adviser. “He wants to make sure that the playing field in boxing is level. He will never fight anyone who doesn’t agree to random blood and urine testing for steroids.”
While you may not like Mayweather as a person or how he carries himself outside of the ring, he is dead-on in his stance on random testing for steroids in boxing, something not everyone in the sport agrees is needed. Bob Arum of Top Rank, who promotes both Marquez and Pacquiao, says the issue of steroid abuse is overblown.
“You don’t have to do that anymore,” Arum said on a conference call Wednesday afternoon. “Wake up and see what these conditioners are saying. They’re using naturally, totally legal substances, and using state of the art conditioning methods. That’s not because of anything other than the fact that there have been advancements in legal methods. The steroid problem is fading into the past.”
If that w as indeed the case, then none of the major U.S. professional sports leagues would have some form of random testing for steroids and the Olympics would dismantle its testing program. Arum maintains that any steroid testing should be conducted under the auspices of the state boxing commissions. That has proven faulty in the past. When BALCO was operating, Conte supplied Mosley with steroids before he fought Oscar De La Hoya in 2005 in Las Vegas. Mosley never tested positive on any of the tests administered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
On another conference call on Wednesday evening, Marquez said he didn’t know anything about Heredia’s past.
If Marquez knocks out Pacquiao, everyone will wonder if he got an illegal boost from Heredia.
“I’ve worked very hard and I’m not going to stop training and getting ready for the fight,” Marquez said. “If they want to do whatever doping or drug testing that they want to do, Olympic-style, or whatever they want to do. I’ll do it. I’m prepared. Just as long as (Pacquiao) does it, too.”
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