The cancellation of Gennardy Golokin’s bout against Canelo Alvarez should come as a star reminder to boxing fans – the sport has a serious drugs problem.
Compared with the controversy caused in other pursuits like cycling and athletics, the use of performance-enhancing drugs is hardly talked about. The use of steroids and other substances is almost blindly accepted or at least ignored by some governing bodies across the globe. Testing is not centralized worldwide or all-year round, and often barely adequate.
But the scrapping of GGG and Canelo’s mega-fight in Las Vegas, because of Alvarez’s positive test of steroids in February, should be the push for boxing to be properly cleaned up.
You only need to look at the heavyweight division to see how far doping has infiltrated the sweet science. Last month Dillian Whyte, who was banned for two years for using the stimulant Methylhexaneamine, fought Lucas Browne, who tested positive for Clenbuterol and then later Ostarine. Also last month Detonay Wilder beat Luis Ortiz, who has twice failed drugs tests.
On Saturday Alexander Potevkin, who has test positive for performance-enhancing drugs twice since 2016, defeated David Price. Shannon Briggs, Tyson Fury, Vitali Klitschko, Francios Botha, Evander Holyfield, Chris Arreola and Tony Thompson are some of the other heavyweights who have been embroiled in doping incidents over the years. But it’s not just the big men who have been caught juicing, or implicated in the use of steroids. Some of the greatest fighters ever to have stepped into the ring have been tainted by the spectre of performance-enhancing drugs - Fernando Vargas, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr, Shane Mosley, Erik Morales, Antonio Tarver, Pernell Whitaker. The list goes on.
Across the divisions and different levels, drugs in boxing is a big issue. There are some signs though that progress is being made. The outcry over the GGG-Canelo fight is a start. But more important has been the rise of the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA). Both the World Boxing Association and the World Boxing Council have signed up to random testing all-year round by VADA. Their programs titled ‘Fair Boxing’ and ‘Clean Boxing’ is a huge step forward.
But the International Boxing Federation and the World Boxing Organisation have yet to join the crackdown. The problem is that the sport has too many regulatory bodies, not a centralized leadership. Drug testing all year round, not just the six weeks leading up to a fight, is expensive and costly. Some associations paid lip service to testing. Bans have clearly not been a deterrent to boxing trying to cheat the system.
Criticise cycling all you like, but it has actually taken heavy action to try and clean up its sport. Cyclists are inspected, tested, prodded and poked now probably more than any other code. The scrutiny is intense – just ask Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins. Boxing needs to do the same.
It is one thing to take performance-enhancing drugs when your competition is only the road, your time and other cyclists. But in boxing, your only opponent is in the other corner, and the consequences of facing a fighter who is significantly bigger, stronger and faster, who hits much harder, can be deadly.
Fight fans, and especially the boxers who put their lives on the line, deserve better.
