Tony Thompson calls for doping to be legalised

Why stop at legalisation? Make doping compulsory. Force all fighters to have shots of the A side meth between rounds. That'll level the playing field.

 

Conte has been calling Thompson all day since he read this...

 

Anybody else thinking this could be some kind of publicity stunt to make Thompson out to be the "bad guy"? Just seems a bit out of character.

 

To be honest I agree completely. I reckon a huge % of active boxers take peds but only a small % get caught and only a smaller % of fights are legally questionable.

To be honest though peds aren't really that big a deal from my perspective. If it's an even playing field the only negative is side effects and that is then down to personal choice. Make it legal and cut the black market.

Same with drugs in general, legalise that **** and leave it down to personal choice.

 

I'm bang against it. Get them out of sport n crack down harder on the cheats.

 

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090

 

But what about other people less educated, less middle class than you? Builders or blacks for example.

 

Why not?

People use pharmaceuticals every day in every way to improve their lives. Doping allows a fighter to have improved stamina and put on a better performance. It's already happening for the privileged by having undetectable drugs or having promoters work out deals with the testing agencies to cover up results, time for the sport to evolve. If anything it allows the older fighters to continue their careers in a meaningful way.

 

Thompson speaks more on his views in this interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p015d422

 

If you look at professional Bodybuilding where doping is widely recognized as a necessity what happens is that the sport becomes more underground with fringe interest. Casual people think of it as 'cheating' once everybody knows its full of roiders, even though a bodybuilder on roids still has to work just as hard as without roids.

If pro boxing were to go 100% PEDs I think it'd be the ultimate downfall of boxing. TV stations would drop boxing (as they don't want to support cheating, see TV stations dropping the Tour De France broadcasts after the doping scandals). It would level the playing field but the sport and boxer's purses would suffer on a grand scale.

 

If it became legal it wouldn't be cheating though. That's the point.

 

It really depends on the performance the fighters are putting out. Nobody blinks about the current legal enhancement techniques like hyperbaric chambers or legal supplements. It's a matter of perception. Legalize blood doping and get more competitive fights the stigma goes away.

 

The main problem with PEDs isn't so much improving sports performance (there's little scientific evidence that they help anything) but the fact they're detrimental to health in general. Legalising them is just going to make every athlete feel like they need to use them or use them in greater quantities if they're already a user. It's the health issues that should be a concern. Boxers still can't get basic things like nutrition and weight training correct and those things will make more of a difference to performance than any PED will.