Are there true unbiased journalists or boxing experts out there?

[Kirkland Laing]

Thomas hauser is like the Queen Mother of boxing journalists. He's Ali's biographer and a friend of his, written a ton of other boxing books and you'd think he'd be as close to impartial about boxing as you can get. When there was the Mayweather steroids thing going on over Christmas he wrote an article where he listed a whole bunch of known steroid abusers, admitted PED abuse was endemic in boxing, then said anybody accusing Manny, especially the Mayweathers, was a scumbag because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing, then he accused De La Hoya of using steroids and challenged him to release all his previous test results. A whole smorgasbors of contradictions in one article. So if Hauser can't be impartial I don't think any of his younger colleagues can be.

Plus like has already been mentioned Manny is the story in boxing right now and for a wider audience and that insulates him from a lot of legitimate criticism. Mayweather may make great TV on 24-7 but the wider public don't exactly see him as a positive role model or somebody they can admire. With Manny it's different, so you have a bunch of guys desperate to have access/interviews with him and not lose out to their competitors as well as editorial pressure from the guys who employ them to be nice to the guy everybody wants to read about. So it's inevitable you're going to get the kind of biased coverage you do over Manny and the whole PED thing. Unless some actual evidence turns up that's the way it will stay too.

[Fenster]

Thomas hauser is like the Queen Mother of boxing journalists. He's Ali's biographer and a friend of his, written a ton of other boxing books and you'd think he'd be as close to impartial about boxing as you can get. When there was the Mayweather steroids thing going on over Christmas he wrote an article where he listed a whole bunch of known steroid abusers, admitted PED abuse was endemic in boxing, then said anybody accusing Manny, especially the Mayweathers, was a scumbag because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing, then he accused De La Hoya of using steroids and challenged him to release all his previous test results. A whole smorgasbors of contradictions in one article. So if Hauser can't be impartial I don't think any of his younger colleagues can be.

Plus like has already been mentioned Manny is the story in boxing right now and for a wider audience and that insulates him from a lot of legitimate criticism. Mayweather may make great TV on 24-7 but the wider public don't exactly see him as a positive role model or somebody they can admire. With Manny it's different, so you have a bunch of guys desperate to have access/interviews with him and not lose out to their competitors as well as editorial pressure from the guys who employ them to be nice to the guy everybody wants to read about. So it's inevitable you're going to get the kind of biased coverage you do over Manny and the whole PED thing. Unless some actual evidence turns up that's the way it will stay too.

The info in that article about the apparent common drug use in boxing was eye-opening though. If it's so widely known why did Team Floyd bring it up now? Personally I think Pac was in the wrong but it was interesting so many in the "know" thought Floyd was running.

[Kirkland Laing]

Thomas hauser is like the Queen Mother of boxing journalists. He's Ali's biographer and a friend of his, written a ton of other boxing books and you'd think he'd be as close to impartial about boxing as you can get. When there was the Mayweather steroids thing going on over Christmas he wrote an article where he listed a whole bunch of known steroid abusers, admitted PED abuse was endemic in boxing, then said anybody accusing Manny, especially the Mayweathers, was a scumbag because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing, then he accused De La Hoya of using steroids and challenged him to release all his previous test results. A whole smorgasbors of contradictions in one article. So if Hauser can't be impartial I don't think any of his younger colleagues can be.

Plus like has already been mentioned Manny is the story in boxing right now and for a wider audience and that insulates him from a lot of legitimate criticism. Mayweather may make great TV on 24-7 but the wider public don't exactly see him as a positive role model or somebody they can admire. With Manny it's different, so you have a bunch of guys desperate to have access/interviews with him and not lose out to their competitors as well as editorial pressure from the guys who employ them to be nice to the guy everybody wants to read about. So it's inevitable you're going to get the kind of biased coverage you do over Manny and the whole PED thing. Unless some actual evidence turns up that's the way it will stay too.

The info in that article about the apparent common drug use in boxing was eye-opening though. If it's so widely known why did Team Floyd bring it up now? Personally I think Pac was in the wrong but it was interesting so many in the "know" thought Floyd was running.

I wouldn't say they're in the know, I'd say they're in the business. And their business is to sell papers or, increasingly, to get mouse clicks. They've got tons of commercial pressure from the top to be nice to the guy everybody wants to read about which skews their coverage and makes them all pro-Manny. The bottom line is that all Manny had to do to get the fight on was to accept the drug testing. It could have been done immediately and would have been lost in the overall coverage/hype of what would have been a mega event, Manny wouldn't have lost face over accepting, quite the reverse, he would have looked like he had nothing to hide.

They could even have negotiated a face-saving deal and before the fight was announced got the Nevada Athletic Commission to announce mandatory random drug testing for "megafights" with Floyd-Manny being the first if it got made. So there were ways to do it with no loss of face and/or to make it a non-issue but Manny refused and we got a bunch of ridiculous excuses instead. If a heavily-tatted Floyd had increased his power from 130 to 147 and turned random testing down saying he was scared of needles/superstitious/weakened by losing nine mils of blood etc. I don't think journalists would be blaming Manny for the fight falling through.