AMERICA AT LARGE:There are strong suspicions that Floyd Mayweather's demand that Manny Pacquiao pass a blood test is just a ruse to avoid getting himself beat up, writes GEORGE KIMBALL

I GUESS the first question you might ask yourself is this: would you die unfulfilled if Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather never did fight each other? Didn’t think so.

In fact, in the midst of the charges and countercharges flung about over the past couple of weeks, the one constant has been the assertion from both sides that the failure of the March 13th megafight to come off would somehow lead to the ruination of boxing.

Or, as Mayweather has put it, “When I leave, the sport is dead”. (When Floyd leaves, who could tell? I mean, the guy has had five fights in five years.)

The coffers of the respective promoters, on the other hand, would each be enriched by upwards of €8 million, which does make you wonder why Top Rank’s Bob Arum and Golden Boy’s Richard Schaefer have so enthusiastically carried the water for their pugilists in a very public war of words seemingly designed to torpedo its chances of coming off at all.

Unless that was the goal all along.

Say you’re Mayweather and you’ve spent the past few years watching Pacquiao absolutely pulverise guys like Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and Miguel Cotto. If you’ve absolutely no interest in having the same thing happen to you, but you’d also like to keep your options open, wouldn’t it be clever to say, “Manny Pacquiao? I can’t wait to fight him!”

At the same time, cloaking that proposal in conditions that are bound to be so humiliatingly insulting that their acceptance would create the widespread impression that Manny is Floyd’s bitch would pretty much guarantee that he didn’t have to get in the ring with Pacquiao.

This would be an even cleverer tactic if you could insulate yourself by persuading a third party – say, one who speaks with a Teutonic accent – to deliver the ultimatum.

And as Arum noted this week, who made Mayweather the commissioner of boxing, anyway?

Am I saying here that Pacquiao is squeaky-clean and has never used performance-enhancing drugs? I don’t know that to be a fact, but I do know he has been repeatedly tested over the course of his 55-fight career and has never come up positive for anything. And that presumably includes yesterday morning, when he got up and peed in a bottle in General Santos City in response to a demand for “immediate, out-of-competition urine tests” ordered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC).

(And in the midst of all this posturing, wasn’t the NSAC doing a bit of that themselves? Since Pacquiao-Mayweather not only has not been signed, but has no official venue,, by leaping into the fray at that particular moment was the Nevada commission trying to eradicate the Cowboys Stadium option by creating the impression that Las Vegas was now fait accompli?)

Here’s something I do know for a fact: unlike Pacquiao, Shane Mosley does have a history of Peds (performance-enhancing drugs). When he tested positive for steroids, Sugar Shane claimed he used the Balco designer drugs “the cream” and “the clear” unknowingly. Right. And the dog ate my homework.

Less than two years ago, at a New York press conference announcing a fight between Zab Judah and Mosley, Judah and his attorney, Michael Shinefield, told me of their intent formally to request both boxers agree to blood tests administered by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“It’s an expensive test, but we’re willing to pay for it,” said Shinefield, who noted that Nevada testing procedures were limited to urinalysis.

Here’s what Richard Schaefer had to say that day: “Whatever tests (the NSAC) wants them to take, we will submit to, but we are not going to do other tests than the Nevada commission requires. The fact is, Shane is not a cheater and he does not need to be treated like one.”

That’s the same Richard Schaefer who less than two weeks ago insisted that Pacquiao agree to Olympic-type, random blood testing as a precondition to a Mayweather fight.

Then, just a couple of days ago, Schaefer blamed the media for the widespread confusion over the issue, noting that many sportswriters “don’t know the difference between blood and urine testing”.

It might be a sad commentary on the age in which we live, but, as a class, sportswriters probably know more about drug-testing procedures than any other group you could name – including, and maybe even particularly, athletes themselves.

For the record, Pacquiao did not reject blood testing out of hand. He agreed to have blood drawn at the press conference announcing a Mayweather fight, another one 30 days beforehand and a third in his dressing-room immediately following the bout – but not to unannounced tests he claimed might “weaken” him at a critical stage of his training regimen.

If that timetable doesn’t sound especially random to you, you’re right. Nor did Pacquiao’s other explanations: that he is phobic about needles (this from a guy who is a walking billboard for Filipino tattoo parlours) or that he just doesn’t like to have blood drawn. (“Who does?” asked Mayweather.)

Golden Boy cast further doubt on Pacquiao’s stance when it leaked to some of its favoured media lackeys that HBO’s 24/7 series showed Manny having blood drawn less than two weeks before last May’s fight against Hatton. Turns out the 24/7 episode had been taped several weeks earlier.

So who is telling the truth here? Nobody – although Arum’s supposition that Mayweather never did want the fight should not be lightly dismissed. Both sides now say that Pacquiao- Mayweather will either be signed by this morning or dead altogether, and Arum has already provisionally lined up Paulie Malignaggi as a March 13th Pacquiao opponent should it go up in smoke.

And should they reach a last-minute accord? Well, the rule of thumb in the boxing business is that it takes at least three months to properly promote a pay-per-view event of this magnitude.

That the parties are well inside that limit already would be of scant consequence.

Haven’t they already had your undivided attention for the past two weeks?

“Here’s something I do know for a fact: unlike Pacquiao, Shane Mosley does have a history of Peds (performance-enhancing drugs). When he tested positive for steroids, Sugar Shane claimed he used the Balco designer drugs “the cream” and “the clear” unknowingly. Right. And the dog ate my homework.