Holyfield/Briggs/Morrison all tested clean in their pro fights but we know they juiced so this proves nothing. It is not difficult to juice 51weeks of a year and cut out the juice 1 week pre-bout and pass a drugs test. You just need to know which roids clear your system quik enough Vitali was well looked after in his early career, got plenty of fights, never got thrown to the wolves in a fight he could not handle and was well financially compensated while being taken the safe WBO route to the title. Lets not pretend he got shafted by his promoters
Exactly right. If anything, steroid use increases the risk of injury, as tendon and ligament strength do not increase in proportion to the increased muscular strength.
Spot on. Yates was a mess eventually. If powerful steroids minimised the chance of injury, why are so many bodybuilders injuring themselves with some nasty, nasty injuries?
As far as I know, steroids didn't hit the states until the 60's. Maybe some elite athletes were privvy to them before though, I don't know...in any event, I doubt Liston was on the stuff.
Because they are lifting too heavy for sustained periods of time and take about one hundred times the required dose? bodybuilders are the most unhealthy collective on the planet. using a bodybuilder as an example is silly, it's like saying food is bad for you because of the effect it had on elvis; we are talking about intelligent, moderate use. In normal dose's steroids are exemplary at rebuilding tissue, they are not a miracle drug however and shouldn't be treated so. Most people that use know jack about what they are taking let alone dosing and it's effects. I think Vitali's physical state is more down to his genetics than anything else, tall people do tend to have more health complications; that and being a professional fighter for most of his adult life.
To an extent you can tell a steroid body by looking at how full the muscles are, Liston doesn't carry that sort of physique Steroids in boxing probably didnt get used until the 80s, 70s at the earliest, the 90s and 00s saw a wide spread abuse of the juice though
Steroid research started way back in the 1840's, but it took until the mid forties for the big boys to get involved, namely Ciba and Searle and they proceeded to synthesize testosterone and it's many derivatives on a professional level. As early as 1954 the soviets were administering injections for their weightlifting teams. Their showing at the world weightlifting championship of that same year got a lot of attention, not least because of the fact that they were smashing world records right left and centre; this was the real door opener for steroids and put them on the radar to everyone on the scene. Obviously they were hardly freely available as they are today, but people involved in strength sports could theoretically have used steroids from the mid fifties. Liston may have been, though speculation over the matter just because he is quite a big guy is a bit baseless.
Steroid research started way back in the 1840's, but it took until the mid forties for the big boys to get involved, namely Ciba and Searle and they proceeded to synthesize testosterone and it's many derivatives on a professional level. As early as 1954 the soviets were administering injections for their weightlifting teams. Their showing at the world weightlifting championship of that same year got a lot of attention, not least because of the fact that they were smashing world records right left and centre; this was the real door opener for steroids and put them on the radar to everyone on the scene. Obviously they were hardly freely available as they are today, but people involved in strength sports could theoretically have used steroids from the mid fifties. Liston may have been, though speculation over the matter just because he is quite a big guy is a bit baseless. Coming to conclusions based on someones physique is very difficult, there are a lot of steroids available that predominately give strength gains and minimal size gains. Also it's highly individual, someone like Joe Calzaghe is never going to look like Steve Reeves; genetics play a big part.
Bodybuilders usually know allot more about gear than boxers though, and regardless of dose the muscle strengthens while the tendon stays the same strength making potential tendon/joint injuries a likelyhood under intense conditions
We'll never know. I'm just saying that some people here consider Klitschko guilty on speculation, but by the same reasoning, you could find every boxer from the mid 50's to be a steroid user.
Well, i rank very highly on head to head ability, strong styles (VK was a boxer puncher), intangiables (VK has an iron chin, big punch and good stamina), so yes, he'd definitely beat Liston who quit on his stool and could not make more than one title defence against a middleweight. Sorry, that was Suzieqvic, SuzieQ's twin brother who grew up in Ukraine, speaking.
