Any historical precedence for what happened Saturday night?

you're hignly naive if you think that gaining muscle by just lifting weights, while being on a diet and doing intensive and extensive cardio at age 39 is normal

 

I don't know where you get this stat from but it's simply not true. Pretty much any top boxers does weight training asaik.

 

no side by side transformation pics?

 

Sure, I've seen allot of light barbell complexes & machine work but not proper strength training. Apart from Haye, Holy & the Klits I've never seen footage of a top fighter power cleaning, snatching or squating significant weight and it's something I've paid attention to. There must be examples but it's definitely rare. I know Mosley benched heavy but I didn't hear anything about him rounding that out intelligently and knowing him I doubt he did.

 

It's stupendously normal. Walk into a local rugby or olympic weight lifting club and ask them whether they think Marquez would have had to use steroids to gain 5lb of muscle in half a year. They'll wee their singlets.

 

wasn't it publicized before the fight that he'd started a serious weight training program for the first time in his career? Im sure I heard it referenced in 24/7 and Merchant also brought it up.

i'm not saying he isnt taking something - good chance they all are - just that you dont need to insert roids into the narrative to explain anything here so we should keep an open mind

 

::

 

I think he gained more than 5 lbs of muscle, he also converted fat to muscle. But that's beside the point imo. The real concern is that you compare him to a rugby player or olympic weight lifter, sure these guy can gain 5 lbs of muscle in 6 months but they are far bigger than Marquez is ( so 5 lbs is relativley far less for them ) and, even more importantly, they gain a copious amount of fat on top of it. If they'd have to make weight and cut, a lot of their muscle gain would go down the drain ( assuming they train without PED wich is a very big proposition imo ). On top of it, Marquez is 39 y.o., an age where your testosterone level takes a significant dip, had he done this while in his early 20's then, sure, no problem. At near 40 y.o., I simply don't believe it.

 

People are far too immersed in their own predispositions about Pac and JMM. It is affecting their judgment and their ability to put the latest fight in perspective. If you watched this fight with your pinoy-tinted glasses on as usual, you saw the same thing that made you score Pac/Bradley 12 rounds to zero for Pac. But if you watched the fight from a more balanced perspective, and like me you saw the previous 3 fights as being either very close or with JMM edging out Pac (especially fight 3 where JMM just plain WON), you would have noticed all the hard shots JMM landed on Pac throughout the series. You would have also noticed that whenever Pac tried his classic pursue-and-punch style that worked so well against bigger, slower fighters, that JMM was coming so close with so many counters that he easily could have knocked Manny down a number of times.

Pac flying in off-balance, and maybe the best counter-puncher in boxing today in front of him, you are just ASKING for a head-on decapitating counter punch. Pac was very, very lucky he was not dropped in the other fights, and I personally saw JMM as technically the better of the 2 in EVERY fight. Not necessarily the better fighter in general, not necessarily better from an ATG perspective - just technically more sound. This was just an incident waiting to happen; if you couldn't see that then you were simply too biased and now hopefully your "irrational exuberance" has been corrected.

This was not an "obvious" event. Pac is so skilled and punches so hard that you could easily see how he could beat JMM again, and indeed bloodied him up badly in this last fight. So although I don't see the KO as being something easy to predict or imminent, I saw it as a reasonably likely possibility. Pac rushes in full force, JMM sets up sneaky straight right counter, you have an accelerating (huge) noggin being struck by an accelerating fist going the other direction, and that equals cerebral displacement.

I am really not sure that it made any difference, even if JMM gained 20% more punching power from steroids, for that particular punch - as much of its force was from Manny falling in coupled with the way JMM PERFECTLY threw the punch. I think even if you take a little steam off that punch, Manny still doesn't beat the count, and in fact was out for what a minute or two? Really not sure that with a punch like that steroids make any damn difference at all. That is just pure skill coupled with a little luck and an opponent too willing to fly in off-balance, as Manny has done time, and time, and time again, fight after fight, year after year.

I think anabolic steroids are of significant but VERY limited use in lighter weights classes where you are harshly restricted as far as how much muscle you can put on. I think you could make a much, much better case that the EPO and such are really the gold mine here as they increase your endurance considerably and allow fighters (Pac, let's face it) to keep up an incredible workrate and not get tired even when getting hit by bigger opponents. But that didn't really matter in JMM/Pac 4 did it?

JMM has Pac's number. He always has. But Pac has always been more athletic, chemically enhanced as it may be. Now that Pac is getting older, as we have seen in many other cases, the technically sound fighter can stay at a high competition level much longer than the fighter who relies heavily on a fierce workrate, endurance, and sheer speed to win fights. That is what is happening here, and Pac/JMM 5 will end up in a JMM win by KO again.

I think both fighters use PED's. That may even things out greatly. But JMM is a more technically precise fighter than Pac, and is just frankly in a league of his own in counter-punching, perhaps one of the greatest ever. Unreal how he can set up perfectly timed, perfectly accurate, hard punches against fighters at the level of Manny Pacquiao. Truly gifted. Time to wake up from the Pac stupor. It's been great, I love watching Manny fight, but this isn't that hard to figure out.

 

Let's just say that even the PED experts like Victor Conte thinks it's highly unlikely that JMM was natural.

 

you can lose fat and add muscle.. you can keep fat, add muscle.. you can not CONVERT Fat into Muscle.. they are different types of matter in the body !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I was just gonna write about this one.

 

^

 

Sure, he probably knows everybody's taking something. I'm just setting some misconceptions right because I'm a windy didactic prick and i cant help myself ::

 

Hut, I do think you're missing the point a bit though.

I've seen scrawny nerds gain what looks to me like about a stone and a half of muscle, like 20 pounds or so. I know with some proper weight training it's not that hard.

But Marquez has done it while retaining speed and explosiveness.

I'm sure you've seen it plenty of times Hut, where a fighter moves up a division or two only to look too slow/heavy/musclebound, even if their physique LOOKS impressive.

Marquez looks as fast and explosive as ever, age 39, and looking musclier than he ever has done.

A bit like what has been said about Manny retaining all his speed whilst moving up in weight, that's the bit that seems suspicious/unnatural.

 

Olympic lifters are probably the most 'explosive' athletes in the world; back before sprinters started weight training in the late 60s/70s, the weight lifters would beat them over the first 15m with no previous sprint training. Weight training ≠ bodybuilding. There's no inherent trade off between strength and quickness, it's just a matter of training in a way appropriate for an athlete and not a bodybuilder. Low reps, explosive lifts.

 

Marquez is about as obvious as a juicer as there ever was. Who cares?

 

Yep, and I don't give a shit. Everyone should juice now, just even this shit up and call it a day.

 

Evander Holyfield vs Riddick Bowe 3 ended in knock out too, right?

 

Hut, care to come up with a cite for this? I'm calling bull fucking shit, and even if you come up with a cite, I'm still calling bullshit. There is no way this is true. None.

 

That's a good one. Perfect example.

 

Actually its highly naive to assume just because of his age he can't get ripped and look to be in amazing shape, I love the whole guilty til proven innocent that goes on in sports.
I know a few guys around in boxing that are trainers that take no steroids who are 40-45 years old, and pics of them when they were younger showed them as skinny punks... it happens, there is always an exception to the rule, plus these are boxers, guys who train and workout like madmen....

 

well, even vasquez-marquez IV, although vasquez was shot to shit by then and even a flyweight would've probably cut him open w/ a punch or two.

 

a fat former flyweight journeyman did cut him up one fight previous

 

Cool. Since you don't care either way I wont bother digging up a reference but it was the 1968 Soviet female sprint and lifting teams and I read it in Kelly Baggett's vert jump bible. I dont remember of the Russian sports scientist who originally published it. It's also not uncommon for sub super heavyweight oly lifters to have 50" vert jumps, their whole sport is basically a measure of 'explosiveness'. The take home point is, there is no trade off.