On Saturday night Marcos Maidana shocked the boxing world by demolishing heavily favored Adrien Broner by taking the WBA welterweight championship belt. Over 1.3 million viewers tuned in to Showtime to watch the dramatic bout making it the third-highest audience on record for live boxing on Showtime since the network began tracking individual bouts in 2009.
Without a doubt Maidana had a perfect game plan to attack from the opening bell giving Broner his first loss. The Argentine with 31 knockouts was able to send the trash talking Broner to the canvas twice but was cheating part of the plan to win?
In the 11th round Alex Ariza, who was Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach and is now part of the Maidana corner, was caught on video administering some kind of pill to Maidana between the rounds.
In a recent interview by TheSweetScience.com, they questioned Alex Ariza about the allegations of him slipping some sort of energy booster or anything at all to Maidana’s mouth.
Ariza laugh and explained, “the napkins were pieces of gauze. Maidana wanted to blow his nose,” Ariza explained. So, that’s what he did, he stated. Did he put anything in Maidanas’ mouth? “No, of course not,” he said. “People like to make drama. It was nothing. We shouldn’t take away from the fighter’s performance. He did all the work. We didn’t do anything illegal.”
Some say it could have been an energy booster or smelling salts. Either way, smelling salts or any other stimulant during a fight is strictly prohibited and that could potentially lead to Maidana’s win being overturned.
The video captured more than a napkin, you see Ariza holding something inside the napkin. Ariza told FightHype.com that it was a dental cotton roll he used with the napkin.
“See, what I always do is I put one in the gauze; I place it inside with the gauze. I was trying to blow his nose so I went to wipe his nose. It’s just a sterile thing; it’s just clean. You don’t want to get your hands all over it because it could go inside of his mouth. You can even see me [in the video] taking it out and wiping his eye. Believe me, if it was smelling salt or it had coagulant on it, I’m not going to wipe his eye with it. What the fuck? So I can send him out there blind? Fuck! Put it in perspective. You have to watch the whole video. So there’s your mystery pills. The culprit…sterile gauze dental rolls (laughing).”
At this point it is all speculation and all the Broner fans are upset so they’re making accusations. Considering Brandon Rios, who Ariza also is part off, tested positive for the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine, often used as a dietary supplement but also a performance-enhancing drug, during the post fight against Manny Pacquiao, I could see why it will certainly raise some questions.
However, Maidana was tested in his locker room after the bout by USADA which included a blood and urine sample and the Texas Boxing Commission has also opened an investigation into allegations of cheating. It will take 1-2 days for the boxing commission to reveal the results, until then don’t get your panties all bunched up.
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Video Interview With Alex Ariza about the issue.
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