Contrasting effects of performance-enhancing drug use on boxing holistically versus other pro sports

While boxing is physically demanding boxing has a huge skill element that no drug can assist with. A skilled boxer can take away an opponents physical advantages if he knows how too, so a fighter can pump himself full of PED's but that won't help him much vs a fighter that has his him figured out.

You don't hear of other skill based sports like snooker, golf, darts, archery etc having huge problems with doping. That's because no steroid giving greater physical attributes will help a golfer putt better, possibly drive better but if you can't sink that ball on the green, how far you can drive means little.

 

Povetkin was going to be my example for this thread too. Take him out of Russia and it looks like he is ill when he is fighting. Fight him in Russia and you would think you were in with a fresh faced 22 year old with all the energy in the world.

 

I think you see a larger drop in performance AFTER coming of peds, Than you see an increase in performance jumping on them, When you have been taking synthetic testosterone, your body begins to shut down its own testosterone production and thus when you come off, your test levels are even lower than they would be naturally and often never recover even after years and many people find them selves having to go onto testosterone replacement therapy due to low having test levels. Low test comes with a whole host of negative symptoms, Common symptoms of low test you can read anywhere ,reduced muscle mass,increased body fat,persistent fatigue,brain fog,depression etc etc.

Add that to the psychological effect of having to now train with low test and no help from the drugs into the mix and a fighter will never physically or mentally be the same.

 

like you said there is a huge range of different substances to help fighters. be that improvement of physical attributes, but also for losing weight without burning of muscle. There are also PED's that help the body regenerate better so may not in itself improve the athlete but will help it recover from the previous days session meaning the body is fresher for the next session meaning he will gain more from it. So many different factors, also chemist outs there get paid more for creating PED's by changing compounds slightly or masking than those who are paid to catch out cheats so can be that one step ahead. In addition to this chemists can change compounds slightly to then have them technically no longer the drug they once where meaning they are no longer a banned substance. Much like in the UK when we had a huge influx in legal highs. What happened here (UK) was chemists would change the make up of things like cocaine so that they were no longer technically and more importantly LEGALLY the same drug. Meaning it was now a declassified substance that was not illegal as it had only just been invented. I imagine things like this also prevail in sport in where fighters are technically not taking a banned substance as it hasnt logged and made illegal yet.

 

Unlike your PED protected fraud Joshua who never leaves the U.K. as a pro and gets gifed his gold medal there as well. Clean up your own house before you go commenting on someone else's. Povetkin never tested ositivie for any PED's and the tow substances he had acceptable limits of in his system were a weak SARM and a vitamin like substance so try catching a clue.

 

So vomit inducing reading these pedantic rants and no nothing soliloquy's from arm chair scientist who have never taken a PED while training any fight sport seriously. Learn about androgen recruitment and how if affects physiology then tell me with a straight face how PED's do nothing to improve a skill set.

Most of you seem the the types who could go camping, get ass raped by a Sasquatch and all the while say this is not happening, you don't exist.

 

Blood pressure meds for 46 year old 250lb man do not equal PED's.

 

you do know you aint being forced to read them, right?!

However you have a point the very fact they are called Performance ENHANCING drugs kinda gives it away!!

 

I'm a fan of soccer, tennis, athletics, rugby, and a bunch of other sports as well as boxing.

I believe that most the top players in most these sports are doping (not necessarily steroids, there are hundreds of other PEDs that can help you physically in all kinds of ways, some very difficult to detect).

Probably the only relatively clean sports are things like snooker, darts, shooting, bowling, basically sports that require little physical exertion, but even in these I would bet my bottom dollar there are a few taking drugs that will aid them with concentration, the so called 'study drugs'.

But you always come across the same resistance in each sport, fans of tennis for example will say "there is no drug that can improve your backhand, or forehand, or slice or whatever". Well maybe not directly. No one is saying you can just take PEDs and automatically become a better tennis player. You still have at put the work in.

But if we take 2 junior players, player A, and player B. Both of similar ability, both very driven, and both slogging it out in training every day. Then one starts doping, he's taking drugs that will help his stamina, endurance, strength and recovery times. Who is going to eventually have the edge? The guy who is now finding training every day is getting easier so he can now slog it out for longer and finesse his game faster and even hit the ball harder, or the other guy who is doing it clean? The clean guy might be able to keep up for so long, slogging it out in training, but he is going to find it extremely difficult in the long run to keep up with the doper, and when the guy who is doping eventually goes into tournaments, grand slams, in 5 hour matches sometimes, who is going to have the massive edge in that 5th set?

And who is going to recover the best and come in fresh when sometimes they might have to play the very next day?

Doping will even help you mentally, because the mind can get tired as well as the body, but if your body feels good during a match it is much easier to keep your mind feeling sharp and focused too. When your body becomes exhausted, your mind will often go as well.

It is probably going to make the difference between being a top 5 player in the world, or a ranked 250th in the world nobody.

It's the same really in boxing, yes of course boxing is a highly skilled sport, like tennis, but you can not get away from the fact that it is also a physical sport, and there are many, many PEDs that will help you in almost every way imaginable. Of course you still need to put in the work, you still need to put in more hours than anyone else to reach the top, but PEDs make that mountain easier to manage, very, very difficult to reach the summit of that mountain clean. Even with doping it is not going to be easy to reach the top, so you can imagine how tough it would be without any help, it becomes almost an impossible to task because now you have to beat the dopers as well, of which there are MANY, MANY out there cheating.

 

What was the point of this reply? If I see some grandmother getting mugged I don't have to help but i will.

 

PED's improve every aspect of ones life. If you are a dog walker, housewife or mail carrier PED will mprove you job performance and quality of life.. FYI all these public figures like actors. politicians and athletes are on some form of hormonal manipulation.

 

If boxing is mostly about skills and not athletic performance, why don't we have women fighting men huh? Or why is it that weight classes are so important? Athletic performance also plays a huge part in boxing success. Obviously if you have bum level skills there's no need to juice, you'll still lose, but that's missing the point.

 

This kinda covers it.
I read about a EPO study a while ago with a couple of control groups, in different sports.
Conclusion, the ones using the EPO produced significantly better results across the board as the ones that got a placebo or nothing at all. It also showed that the placebo effect worked, as the ones thinking they got doped up had a little edge over the ones that knew they were clean.
But depending on the sport the effect using was much bigger as expected, some even making the jump from "fit person" to "professional athlete" levels in only a couple of months time.
Of course they could use freely and didn't have to fear getting caught, but it also shows that in sports where there's hardly any or no testing at all, or the time before they could even detect something like EPO or comparable products, you can cheat your way to the top pretty easily

 

I was agreeing with your point ?!?! They are called enhancing drugs meaning the enhance your performance.

My other point is that you are not forced to read this thread if it is something that bothers you. I dont like reality TV shows, therefore I do not click on the channel that is showing it when it is on and therefore watch it !! Same is this forum if there are threads that I have no interest in or posts I have no interest in I do not bother with them is all.

 

PEDS do not directly improve technique but they can give you extra time spent working on technique as well which in turn will improve it.