Do you all really believe Wladimir is clean of drugs?

I would like to think not, but there is as good a chance of him doing it as anyone else and reasons to speculate.

 

Nah, him and his brother clearly just have good genetics to start with and work hard in the gym.

Not everyone with a good physique is juicing.

 

I wouldn't be surprised one way or the other. While I hope he is clean, and perhaps a little naively assume as much until proven otherwise, I realize there is no way to know.

I can guarantee one thing: at some point in his career at least one of the fighters in the ring was juicing.

 

I agree with you, but too many fanboys will bury their heads in the sand and stay in denial mode, they are clowns and this isn't just Wlad fans

:deal

 

Eh his style is not made for really big legs. He probably runs a lot and swims a lot. He is a distance fighter an in order to do that effectivly for a long time ud have put a lot of road work. Running makes ur legs pretty thin.

 

Except he doesn't run but swims.

That said i do not believe he takes any.

 

He's a top level boxer and professional athlete worth millions, of course he uses them.

Why are people still so naive about this sort of thing?

 

Be logical... Not all top level boxers with millions of dollar use steroids. Saying all use is as practical and realistic as saying none use. You can't apply an absolute here because there are too many samples (top boxers), and it's likely that at least one of the samples prides his longevity, personal integrity, and/or prospective legacy too much to cheat.

I wouldn't argue against "some" or "many" likely using, but "none" or "all" are both equally silly claims.

 

There aren't that big a sample of boxers worth millions to choose from. When it's your life on the line, not to mention a huge amount of money to be made in potential future earnings, such things as personal integrity and prospective legacy fly out the window.

A top athlete's mindset is set on one thing, and one thing only: winning. Anything that helps them achieve that goal is permissible.

I hold no moral qualms about boxers using steroids, by the way, and I'm not singling any one out. I think once you reach a certain earning potential and you're serious about being the best, such things come with the territory.

It may be cynical or paranoid sounding, but I'm past caring whether athletes are clean or not. There've been too many scandals in modern day sports, too many oustings and whistelblowings for me to hold much hope that anyone is clean, whatever the apparent image they portray.

 

That's why I also mentioned longevity. When it's your life on the line, not all fighters will be willing to cut their prospective lifespan short with prolonged steroid use.

Generalizations are fine, but there will always be exceptions.

 

Going completely off the subject of Wlad, but strongly disagree with the comment about tennis. The testing in tennis is very lax (check the stats for how regularly Federer has been tested in the last couple of years), and easy to get around. When you consider the circumstantial evidence, where players continue to get bigger, stronger and push the limits of what is "humanly" possible (4-5 hour high intensity matches on consecutive days?!?), I wouldn't be surprised if there was a serious doping problem in tennis. The annual schedule of at least one high profile player is highly suspicious. It reminds me a bit of cycling in the 90s, where performances kept on improving, and the public lapped it up because it was great entertainment.

Doping has been a problem in Italian football, and both Real and Barca have been linked with Operacion Puerto. Arsene Wenger has previously commented on dodgy blood levels on imported players. When you consider the sums involved, and the obvious benefits of say EPO in football, it's highly likely that there is plenty of it going on.

Agreed though, that boxing is ripe for drug cheating, as the rewards are great and the testing so infrequent that you'd have to be pretty stupid to get caught.

 

Continuing with your tangent, who would that be? A healthy Nadal, or Djokovic (who happens to come from one of the roid manufacturing/trafficking capitals of the world) who always had fitness/endurance issues until a few years ago?

 

I think taking punches to the head for years is a bigger risk of shortening longevity than a sensible juicing cycle. Boxers aren't on the whole the most long-term of thinkers, so I don't think the argument that "they would be too concerned about the long-term health" holds much water in most cases.

Wlad seems like an intelligent and considered bloke, and he way well have factored in the long-term consequences and decided it wasn't for him. Equally though, he may have factored in the long-term benefits and decided that the potential improvements in performance were worth the risk.

 

"On the whole" and "in most cases" are ways of saying "generally," and all I've been attempting to establish is that there are always exceptions to such generalizations as "all top boxers use steroids." It's overly cynical to assume all use and overly naive to assume no top boxers use. Generally top fighters may use, yes, but this doesn't mean all do.

I said I don't really have any reason to believe that Wlad uses, but I'm not making this argument about fighters considering the long-term consequences to explain why he doesn't specifically, by the way.

 

Well, I don't really like to single out individuals without any real evidence, but if the increased muscle mass, limitless endurance and mysterious absences of a certain popeye-armed Spaniard aren't enough to arouse suspicion, I don't know what is. Not to mention that his surname was linked to Operacion Puerto.

Djokovic's startling transformation in the last couple of years is obviously due to his new gluten-free diet...