Just how big is the drug problem in Boxing?
Just how big is the drug problem in Boxing? | Related News
By Scott Heritage
The latest statements from Floyd Mayweather about every opponent he faces form now on needing to have extra drug testing got me thinking. Is he really that paranoid about every other boxer at the top level being on some kind of performance enhancing drug?
The nature of steroids and illegal supplement users is generally that they have used them for a long time before they get caught. Very few boxers wake up one morning and decide to start dabbling with steroids half way through a career.
Of those who have been caught recently, most have probably been taking them for years and simply mistimed a cycle or didn’t have the right masking agents when testing time came around.
Take Shane Mosley and the Balco scandal for example. Mosley admitted under oath that he took what he believed to be legal supplements for several of his fights, and didn’t know at the time that Balco were involved with obtaining and producing designer steroids for various athletes to use without being detected.
The only reason that the matter ever actually came to light though wasn’t because Mosley himself was caught out while using anything, but that the company itself was exposed.
Had this never happened, Mosley might still be on them today, blissfully unaware at what he was taking and never being caught out with the limited testing procedures of the various State athletic commissions.
There are some drugs that cannot be detected with a determined and educated user, and also others which are not detectable by urine testing alone. Still others are impossible to detect altogether, and no amount of extra testing is going to root out everyone who might be taking things they shouldn’t.
The difficulty comes however when deciding just what to do about the situation. Few would argue that testing could be better, but this isn’t the Olympics, and testing every single fighter for every single fight would be simply unfeasible.
Extensive testing on the likes of Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, and for that matter anyone with a championship or good record wouldn’t break the bank, but testing every journeyman and under card fighter on smaller shows might.
If smaller shows started to get canceled as a result of the extra testing cost for each fighter then the sport as a while would suffer. Floyd Mayweather, the catalyst for much of any coming changes to testing policy hasn’t ever been in the situation of most boxers. An amateur champion, Mayweather’s career took off quickly and he never looked back.
But at the very beginning, he was fighting journeymen and older guys who maybe only made a few hundred bucks for a nights work, and big changes to the testing procedures would hit them the hardest.
Smaller promoters would suddenly have to pick and choose which fighters they could afford to give fights to, and a lot of lower level fighters might have to leave the sport or risk making a lot less money ad fighting less often.
Topics: Boxing, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosley
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Hardnox is right Rain; the bottom line is Pacquaio Will Not Submit to Random Testing!
Rain,
What’s that got to do with random blood tests? Why won’t Pacquiao take a simple blood test?
Come to the philippines Hardnox… they’ll show you how to get strength and power coming from the Heart of Banana Fruit… OPen your MOUTH width and wait for the droplet… by the way make it during fullmoon and friday… Bring along Mayweather with you maybe he is done with magic beans (Xylocaine). Its time to taste d Filipino A-gee-Meth (Agimat)…hahahahahaha
Someone said Pacquiao may retire soon because he is going into politics. I hope it happens and i hope he takes his funs with him. it’s just disgraceful that a real boxing fun would be against any steps that aim to improve the detection and elimination of PEDs in boxing.