Juan Manuel Marquez promises to take 'Olympic-style' testing before next fight

Juan Manuel Marquez is far from oblivious to the speculation that he used performance-enhancing drugs of some kind before his knockout of Manny Pacquiao this past Saturday night, and promises that he's not just a clean fighter, but a clean fighter who will take "Olympic-style" drug testing ahead of his next fight.

"I feel very happy with my training, I feel great about the tests. I won’t have a problem. ... I don’t know what will happen. But this fight, there was so much about people say these things about me. I don’t like to use substances. I didn’t. I trained hard."

As has been pointed out countless times but always needs to be pointed out anyway, the level of testing that Floyd Mayweather and USADA brought to professional boxing in 2010 is not "Olympic-style." That requires 24/7/365 random blood and urine tests. Mayweather has not done that. In fact, nobody in boxing has, save for Nonito Donaire, who is currently doing that sort of testing with VADA. He has not required opponents to do the same to fight him.

Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO) without question is a changed man, physically. There is absolutely no denying that. We've seen a similar transformation in Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO) over the last few years, too. And Pacquiao has also said -- regarding a potential fight with Floyd Mayweather -- that he's also now willing to do whatever tests Mayweather wants.

Like Marquez, Pacquiao has been on the receiving end of these allegations before, and even filed a defamation suit against the Mayweathers (Floyd, Roger, and Floyd Sr) and Golden Boy at one point. Memo Hernandez -- Marquez's controversial strength and conditioning coach -- has said he's considered the same sort of suit against Freddie Roach, who started the media blitz on this topic with Marquez by saying he didn't think Marquez looked "natural."

But neither side suggested additional testing at any point when it would have been an option, and Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is adamant about the testing, which he's never used for any fights, being handled by a state commission, not by USADA or VADA. That, too, is troublesome, given the reputation of many state commissions on this matter. Even New York, which claims to be tough on issues of fighter safety, combined with USADA, which claims to be tough on those who fail tests, recently allowed Erik Morales to fight after he failed two USADA tests.

The point is, this testing thing is still miles from being reliable or truly trustworthy. It's nice that Marquez wants to take extra testing, but he nor anyone else can really prove much of anything without that year-round, real deal testing.

It's currently expected that Marquez and Pacquiao will meet for a fifth time sometime in 2013.