Juan Manuel Marquez looking like a beast . . .

Join the dark side Rico!

 

Yep.

Trying to assess whether someone is juicing based on two fights against to vastly differing styles is not going to work. I was trying to explain that in the general forum when someone was saying 'well why has his speed, power and punch output not improved . . '

 

I know. Which is why in some ways I envy the people who are genuinely none the wiser and believe that unless someone is build like a body builder with unprecedented speed and power they can't be juicing.

Unfortunately I had to write a paper about this at university, which opened my eyes a little and led me to read more and more and more and more until I reached the point where I just accepted that drugs and top level sport go hand in hand.

As you can imagine, I was a joy to watch the Olympics with . . .

 

And with a sport like boxing where the risk and rewards can be so high, your career can be over in one fight, physical conditioning is so important and you can have zero faith in the testing it's not exactly surprising that people will take drugs to boost their performance. I mean, they do it in sports with far lesser rewards and with much stricter testing - why would boxers be any different?

That for me is the point that I never seem to be able to get a clear answer from by people who dismiss the prevalence of PEDS in boxing. If drugs use is sport is so endemic, as most experts in the the field believe it is, and competitors from other sports with far less risks to their health, with lesser rewards and where there is a far higher chance of getting caught still persevere and use drugs to boost their performance, what is it about boxers that make people think that the sport is exempt from these probems?

 

Not just Jamaican, that whole line up

Gatlin! Banned for using performance enhancing drugs, then comes back to appear at the Olympics running faster than he's ever ran before

 

The thing with cycling is that there is a one central body responsible for governing the sport. There is no one in boxing to take responsibility for this, which is why it is allowed to fester and perpetuate . . .

I really don't see how this gets resolved. Boxing is possibly the most poorly governed, shadiest and most financially driven sport around. There's absolutely no motivation for anyone to try and clean it up.

The closest we get is a promoter trying to enforce random drug testing only to be bitten in the ass when they realise how dirty the sport is and how financially damaging it's going to be for them to keep catching out their fighters.