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

Yes, there's no "Become a Champion" magical pill that makes you win fights. That makes you win fights is hard training, natural talent and physical gifts.

PEDs help you to train harder: you can train more hours and at higher intensity if you are using some substances because them reduce your muscle recovery time.

So PEDs give the boxer an unfair advantage over others. You won't win a fight cause you had some roids the previous week, but if you have been on roids and training hard during months.... you will have an unfair advantage.

 

EPO was commonly used in the 90's but has been detectable for more than 15 years.

 

There is a test, but you can get round it by taking it via a Intraoperative Autologous Transfusion (IAT), which is a transfusion which recycles your own blood. No way currently of detecting that. The best the authorities can do is keep a biological passport, but as long as the athlete doesn't go crazy, they wont be caught. And if they've already gone to these lengths, chances are they aren't going to do something stupid.

Most the people in the 90s caught taking EPO were confessions after their blood bags were found in their doctor's car.

 

A lot of frozen 1998/1999 Tour de France samples were analyzed along the years and tested positive, including Armstrong's. Recycling your own frozen blood is forbidden in itself and I'm pretty positive EPO would be detectable in such blood. To my knowledge, EPO replaced IAT in the 90's, ITA replaced EPO when the latter became detectable. IAT itself can be detectable since Vinikourov was tested positive as far back as 2007. Don't know the specifics of this test though.

 

Taking a cócktail of different drugs would be hugely beneficial and is the way to do it, but I can tell you right now, you could do this AND pass any test if you do enough research/get expert advice.

As an example, when the Spanish doping doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, was caught in 2006, 186 bloodbags belonging to different athletes were found, he was giving them EPO, steroids, growth hormones and masking agents via blood transfusions. We don't know who most these athletes are (other than a few likely suspects who have been implicated) because the blood bags are in a freezer somewhere in Spain waiting to be destroyed by the order of a Spanish High Court Judge (we can only speculate on what the judges motivation was to destroy this evidence), but I think it is fair to say it is highly unlikely that even a small fraction of these athletes have failed a test while under the wing of Fuentes.

So a lot of athletes have got away with it. And this is just one doctor. We know that one cyclist paid Dr Fuentes $50,000 over one year back in 2002 (I think). So with 186 athletes under your wing, there are clearly huge fortunes to be made ($9.3m per year at that rate). But who knows, maybe Fuentes is the only doctor in the world doing this. But do you believe that?

If we extrapolate, and say there are only 10 doctors with a similar sized operation as Fuentes currently operating, we are now talking about 1,800 athletes doping and getting away with it. With 100 doctors, the number goes up to 18,000 athletes doping (which is as many professional athletes as there are in the USA). With 1,000 doctors worldwide, which doesn't seem an unreasonable guess, we are now talking about 180,000 athletes doping worldwide.

Okay, we can debate those numbers, they are guesses I will grant you that, but my belief is that professional sport is even dirtier than most people imagine.

 

They found double the normal amount of erythrocytes, which is the most common type of red blood cell. So yes, he (or likely his doctor) got careless, so his first course of action probably would have been to fire his incompetent doctor. Then he came back a year later, a slap on the wrist, which is also a disgrace!

 

Incorrect! Androgen recruitment leads directly to CNS activation and recovery which increases reaction time neurological efficiency and the speed and force of skeletal muscle contraction. Of course if you do not train the movement patter in question little improvement will be seen by the organsim ability to perform any task will be heightened through all aspects of physiological adaptation.

 

Nobody is arguing that PED use doesn't affect one's athletic prowess, that's why they're banned across most sports.

The question in the OP is why there hasn't been a surge of 'super boxers' in the PED era like other sports have seen (the home run boom of the 90s in baseball, the sprinting world records being set and broken left & right for a while there, etc).

I answered the question at hand in the very first reply. Boxing is too complicated (too many different styles, too many ways to win, too many variable in every single match-up far beyond what you see in any game in a ball/team sport) to yield "better" results from mass PED use. What does "better" even mean in boxing? What's the measurable quantity? The number of kayos? Even that isn't reliable. You can be the naturally or artificially hardest puncher in the world and have all the natural or artificial stamina to apply pressure for 12 rounds or 15 or even 100 - but if you get in with a slick master boxer, you're not getting a chance to unload all that power on him if you can't get a clean touch on his chin. Besides, in a scenario where EVERYBODY is using PEDs either openly or as open secret, to have a level playing field, wouldn't the opponent have artificially increased resistance to being knocked out? They could take a drug to retain hydration better. They could take roids and build up their neck muscles. They could take stuff to increase their reaction time & speed (that stuff has applications defensively too, ya know, and not just for offense!)

Look, all things being equal - literally exactly 100% equal, if you juice one guy he does have an edge over the other. No situation in boxing is ever literally equal, though, so that's an intellectually lazy argument. Styles make fights. One boxer is going to have attributes, strengths and weaknesses (some predictable, some not) that either cancel out, surpass, or come up short of the other's. Artificially enhanced abilities will make up part of that equation if one is juicing but they guarantee nothing. There's no such thing as your "otherwise perfectly equal" thought experiment.

Of course a performance enhancing drug will enhance athletic performance, and of course athletic performance is part of boxing. The question, though, was how does PED use seem to have affected the overall net results of most other sports but not boxing? The answer, like I've stated numerous times now, is that boxing is far more complex and nuances than all those other sports, with the same cookie-cutter physiological actions performed over and over. Boxing will still have snooze fests, still have ugly foul-filled style clashes, will still have brutal knockouts, will still have dazzling technical displays, all of is constituent elements- no matter whether everybody is juicing, nobody is, or anywhere in between.

An individual like Mosley or Holyfield can take EPO and probably see direct benefits when taking on a rival they've fought before, against whom they're more or less evenly matched, and notice they've gained an edge in certain areas (which may or may not translate into changing the result, the # of rounds they win, or whether they score a knockout) but overall, by and large, boxing is too complex to LOOK noticeably different if all the guys on top are using stuff. Not to anywhere near the same degree as it was obvious in, say, baseball. Which I believe is what the OP was asking about in the first place.

 

I agree.

Yeah, nah.
Nah, yeah.

It does work but not always.

 

We already saw them in the 1990's. Evander Holyfield was 200 pounds, but had the workrate of a high stamina WW. Dude gained like 30 pounds of muscle with ease all the while retaining ridiculous workrate. Or Roy Jones Jr. was so hopped up on steroids his nuts were the size of a needle head. Wonder where he got all that speed from.

 

Welcome to the site and this is the nicest way I can put this:

Yes, of course PEDs help. They are illegal for a reason. They enhance your performance. Whether that means better strength, speed, stamina, recovery, weight cutting etc.....they are banned for a reason. It's simple. Otherwise people wouldn't take them.

 

Well let me give you boxing fans a great chuckle. Golf fans feel their SPORT yes sport not game has people taking PED. I mean a game where a fat out of shape **** smoking wins events feels peds helps them. Hahaha Yes taking that PED to make a 6 feet putt. The moment a golf fan sees anyone in the gym or not fat or skinny then they must be taking drugs. This is the sort of level of ignorance we see in Golf.

 

They give you bigger hands


Ask Blizzy.