Hopkins on Pacquiao: Weak Excuse, Take Loss Like a Man
Former champion and partner in Golden Boy Promotions, Bernard Hopkins, has no sympathy with Manny Pacquiao's reasons for underperforming against Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May 2nd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Pacquiao entered the contest with a pre-existing right shoulder injury. He claims he further aggravated the injury during the fourth round of action. The injury was first revealed during the post-fight press conference after the fight. Pacquiao has now had surgery for the injury and likely won't return until the end of the year or early 2016.
Many fans are upset, because Pacquiao suffered the injury in early April and kept it under wraps until after the fight was over. Several lawsuits have been filed by consumers who feel deceived.
Hopkins says Pacquiao could have covered himself a bit, by revealed the injury to the Nevada State Athletic Commission during the official weighin. Pacquiao filled out the NSAC's pre-fight medical questionnaire and checked 'No' in the section where the document asked if there were any shoulder related issues.
"The fans were told something by Pacquiao.....something, at least to me, that wasn't respectful. Whether [the injury] happened or not, that's the part that's irrelevant. At the end of the day he had an opportunity to check that box [on the medical questionnaire provided by the NSAC], if you were ever injured or ever took any medication. They knew what the box is when they seen it," Hopkins told reporters in Houston.
"Obviously Pacquiao didn't check that box. At least you go on record, but he's not intelligent to figure that out and whoever is behind him is not intelligent, because at the end of the day you think the fans are not intelligent to say 'wait a minute, you're on Instagram and throwing a million punches [in videos], you're hitting the bag, you even hit Freddie Roach, you have All Access, HBO 24/7' and you mean to tell me all of a sudden you had an injury."
Hopkins feels Pacquiao should have just taken the loss and kept the injury to himself or revealed the injury much earlier and accepted the loss without excuses.
"That was a weak excuse [to use] to say you lost. Take your loss like a man and step up, because the embarrassment comes when you make lame excuses that could be true and could not be, don't have to be true and make people think they are not paying attention," Hopkins said.
"My thing is thing is this, I think it was a cheap way to go out and disrespectful not only to boxing but disrespectful to the fans, who had a chance for the ones who backed away from boxing to embrace it again, and now Golden Boy Promotions and any other promoter who think like us - we got to now clean up their sh*t by putting on the best shows, the best events and not let any of this stuff happen on our watch."
