LOS ANGELES – Juan Manuel Marquez’ strength and conditioning coach is no angel, and the Mexican fighter Wednesday challenged everyone to a test.
“All this info on Angel is news to me. I worked very hard and I will do any test they want as long as Manny does, too,” Marquez said during a conference call drumming up his Nov. 12 fight with Manny Pacquiao.
Marquez faced questions regarding his hiring of Angel “Memo” Hernandez, who admitted in court in 2008 selling illegal substances and steroids to Olympic stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.
The 38-year-old Marquez, who’s in for a third fight with Pacquiao, raised a lot of eyebrows a couple of weeks ago when he was shown on video with muscles he’d never grown before in his life.
Pacquiao’s own strength and conditioning coach, Alex Ariza, sounded surprised how and why Marquez had grown so big in such a short time, saying Marquez must be working with “a good team.”
Marquez said it has nothing to do with Hernandez. And he’s willing to take the extra step to prove it.
“I’ve never taken banned substances. You know, when I met him, I knew his background with athletes. It’s a shame, all my hard work, being thrown into the trash can by Conte, by Ariza,” said Marquez.
Conte is no other than Victor Conte, described as a former musician and founder and president of BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative), a sports nutrition center in California.
Conte is no angel himself. He served time in prison in 2005 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids and money laundering, according to Wikipedia.
Marquez stressed that what people see in him these days are the results of plain hard work. Nothing more, nothing less.
“My physical condition is thanks to the hard work that I’ve put in. In my 18 years as a pro boxer, I’ve never trained like this, with three daily sessions – running, weights and training very hard in the gym.
“I don’t care what Pacquiao’s team has to say. My mind is focused on making an intelligent fight and to secure the knockout,” Marquez, according to The Examiner’s Michael Marley, also said.
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