Boxing and PED's

Agreed for the most part. And lets not forget that some people just plainly dont want to put junk into their bodies. Those people wont last long in modern sports, certainly wont make the highest level and hence wont make the big bucks. If sports were natural again those natural athletes would be drawn back into the sport.

That friend of mine from Bulgaria made the point that "The next time you watch the Olympics watch a spring. You will see a large group of runners in a clump, one or two guys who are ahead of everyone else, and usually one guy who is WAY in the back. That one guy is one of the fastest men in the world but hes not on PEDs." Thats an interesting and powerful point by an insider and one that rings true, at least to me.

 

The great improvements in the athletic achievement over the past decades are based on better medical care, better and more consistent nutrition and advances in training. PED's are in the mix but a somewhat distant fourth place, I would say.

I know plenty of guys who look and perform like monsters who never have taken PED's. They just a lot train smarter, are not part time athletes and monitor their nutrition religiously.

 

Just one observation, in terms of our fantasy fights.

If the more recent fighter is hypothetically winning because he is using steroids, which are illegal under the rules of his era, and not available to the old timer fighter…….

Isn’t his win just hypothetically a sham?

 

Yes, just like breaking homerun records that have stood for 30 years while on steroids is a sham.

And I totally reject that training and nutrition have come SO FAR that PEDs are a distant fourth. Jake Lamotta kept a training diary in 1952. It talked about his workouts, diet, even his ****ing bowel movements. I dont have it but my friend who does read some excerpts to me. You would think it was written yesterday. The guy was talking about his carb intakes and protein, etc. Its a total myth that training has advanced so far as to make men supermen. Same with diet. Thats what trainers love to tell people to hide the fact that PEDs are involved. Just like the old "humans have evolved" argument which is total bull**** (evolution takes place over millenia not decades). The advances in training and nutrition may account for slight performance increase. Maybe 2 to 5% on the high end. And thats what you would expect in a peak athlete who is already pushing his body to the max. The athletes today who exceed that and show performances increases far above that are fooling you if they tell you that its down to diet and training. Utter nonsense. Its as ludicrous as the bodybuilders now who claim diet and training is more scientific and thats why they make a freak like Arnold was back in the 70s (who was taking steroids by the fistful btw) look like the 90 pound weakling. Its everywhere. Marky Mark gains 40 pounds of muscle in a month for that bodybuilding movie he was and thats natural? Yeah right. Tom Hardy (who was the original 90 pound weakling) looks like a professional wrestler for Batman and thats natural? But these athletes who do the same thing are somehow different and special? Nope, sorry. If you want you can get it and if you can get away with it you better believe they are doing it. The money and the glory are way too much nowadays not to. Look at boxing. You can get an easy #1 ranking and a title shot and make a couple of million dollars on the low end. I dont know about you but thats hitting the ****ing lottery to me.

 

Again, I know some monsters who never took steroids. Myself, I was accused of doping fairly often but never did. And I looked a lot more like Mike Tyson than Jim Braddock. Some people have the genes to look and perform that way under certain physical tests. Others are just better operators, more natural fighters... The latter is always going to be more pertinent to boxing. However, the former can bridge a lot of the gap.

You are also forgetting that general size of First Worlders has increased due to better and more consistent diet, even among the poor of the First World. Heights have increased across the board (only recently plateauing in the US). Better medical care- prenatal, infant and adolescent - has allowed kids to reach their optimal size. Just the advent of vaccines has ensured a much higher percentage of the population survives to adulthood and survives unscarred by debilitating diseases. All these factors present a larger talent pool of larger athletes.

 

Good points Seamus, & a larger population base too.

It is really hard to distinguish jhow much excellence comes from hard work, genetics, effective training & nutrition &/or drugs.

Ina sport requiring great strength directly tested like weightlifting, it seems likely that unless a well tested natural competition, the vast majotty juice,
The rate will be somewhat lower-& dependent upon testing protocol & the general culture-than say football & basketball.

Arnold today could not even place. There have been some training advances. but mainly many more & effective PEDs & potentiators. He was usually + 235, up to 250, when cut for competition. Later guys under not over 6' came in ~ 300 sliced & diced.

 

If you are a Journeyman already being underpaid, you are not going to give up even more of your purse for drug tests.

Boxing is what it is, it is up to the relevant authorities to sort the mess out.

 

There is a reason why guys like Tyson stand out. Because genetic marvels like that are very few and far between. The fact that they are everywhere you look now has nothing to do with evolution, better diet, or new training techniques.

And you are forgetting that everything we eat today has steroids in it. You can do a study of historic populations that had healthy, rich, consistent diets (and yes, they existed, not everyone historically was starving) and you will not see the kind of genetic freaks that you see today. In fact, if you do a study of the average height of human beings world wide today you will find that to be 5'9". The average height fluctuates regularly based on industrial, climate, and economic factors but the average height over 1000 years ago was 5'8". So the human body isnt changing that much, as anyone who knows anything about evolution could tell you. Go look at the average athlete from 100, 80, 50, and 30 years ago. You will only see a drastic change in physicality in steroid era. Thats not a coincidence and has nothing to do with the idea that athletes in the historic eras were supposedly malnutritioned. As I said these guys had a lot better handle on diet and exercise than we currently give them credit for.

 

There was a book written by a doctor on Steroids. I cant recall the name of the book or doctor. But the guy decided to actually take steroids himself and write a medical book on the benefits, effects, etc. To give you an idea of how potent steroids are: Usually you hear the argument "yeah steroids help but you arent going to see the effects without hard work too." Well, this doctor started taking steroids and stated that the first thing he noticed from them was that his eyesight immediately and dramatically improved. As anyone with glasses can tell you once the muscles in your eyes start weakening theres really nothing you can do to correct that. But this doctor started taking steroids and his eye sight dramatically improved because the steroids were making the muscles in his eyes stronger. Thats a small but pretty good indication of what these things are capable of even with muscles that dont get any exercise.

 

It would take me some effort to find it again but I think a study was done and they broke people into groups of using/not using and exercising/not exercising. The people on steroids not exercising were gaining similar amounts (if not more it's been a long time) of muscle to the people exercising.

 

Surely nobody can argue that steroids are good for you?? Just look at how many wrestlers have died over the years through steroid use.

 

They are not good for you in the kind of doses those guys were taking along with the painkillers, stimulants and recreational drugs that ALL of those guys were taking.

 

Certainly just pumping the equivalent of many times the natural male hormone in your system will add muscle & other "benefits": just look at woman who go for gender reassignment. Yes they had very little testosterone to begin with, but also donly took as much as a typical biologicale male would take, & it dramatically shifts muscle mass & fat distribution, quality of skin, overall shape, & even the nature of ***uality (more raw/visual/immediate).

Though no way do those who do no lifting get near the benefit of those pumping iron or doing other weight bearing muscular activity. Any juicing drug rat could tell you that, & otherwise being Mr. Olympia or a power or Olympic lifting champion would take is drugs & working on form.

There have been some significant, not marginal, increases in training & nutrition technology besides PEDs. But the single biggest factor is drugs.
Though if you chart the progression of world records in weightlifting & track & field, the PERCENTAGE increase mainly & frequency of records, you will see that it does not correlate very well with stroid usage.

Which has caused many records to be broken, but even WITH that, the rate of increase declines gradually over time, since we have more & more approached the human potential. Steroids push that back, but absent genetic engineering, there are pretty predictable rough parameters of limits.

Though if everyone was clean the records & competition would be a lot different.