No Holds Barred: Chris Baldwin on the Mayweather-Pacquiao Debacle

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman spoke with trainer and fight manager Chris Baldwin.

Based in Los Angeles, she is the head trainer at Baldwin Rocks Fitness.

She was also in Las Vegas to watch the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight on May 2, won by Mayweather by a clear-cut unanimous decision, and had a lot to say about it.

We spoke with Chris Baldwin by phone Wednesday.

For the first few rounds, she said, "Floyd came out and did what people thought he wasn't going to do. He stood in front of Manny and shot jabs at him. He pretty much controlled the center of the ring. And Manny for some odd reason wasn't his normal typical, bouncy, let-me-throw-a-thousand-punches-in-a-fight."

Pacquiao's uncharacteristic lack of effective offense, however, was likely not due to a shoulder injury which after the fight he blamed for his performance, she argued.

"Not once did I hear Manny complain about his shoulder. Not once did I hear [trainer] Freddie [Roach] ask Manny about his shoulder. So that to me was kind of an indication that maybe there wasn't really an injury and that they're just saying this stuff now," she said.

"They make themselves look bad to even say one, you're a sore loser, you didn't congratulate Floyd that he beat you fair and square, I thought. You said you won the fight. And now the excuse is, 'I have this shoulder injury.'"

And, she noted, "Now your integrity is shot. You have no honor. Everything is done for the love of money. To me, it's just a sad, pathetic case."

She also knows quite a bit about Pacquiao and Roach, as for two years she had trained fighters at Roach's Wild Card Gym, and when Pacquiao was training there as well.

We discussed why this fight should have been postponed had Pacquiao really had a serious shoulder injury, her experiences training fighters, how her "passion is boxing", domestic violence and combat sports, the issues of concussions and head trauma, her varied martial arts background, police murders and brutality against Black people, and much, much more.

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