Heavyweight James Toney, are you kidding?

That is not a logical argument my friend.
First of all, I disagree with the claim that they would be stupid not to use.
Someone could have a very rational fear of being caught. Or when there is no testing, a fear of being exposed as effectively a cheater & liar-& have it impact your whole reputation & legacy. As it has Holyfield's, & should.

And it would be very wrong to assume boxers either have no principles in the matter, or they should be looked down upon as "stupid" if they actually care about what is right & fair-as a matter of principle & to their opponent.

Also among all the others you named, I have no idea if any used or not!
Bruno was heavily enough muscled that he might have-but near the edge of what can be achieved naturally with his bone structure.
Weaver? Despite his nickname, at only 2" shorter than Bruno, he tended to come in 40 lbs. lighter!
Many HWs at the same time had similar muscle mass-he just had lower body fat & more definition.
Tyson as you must know was big & strong when poor, young, & before he had any exposure to boxing nor reason to use. Genes & later hard training.
Norton was also (more so than Tyson due to less lower body mass) easily within what tons of athletes achieve naturally.

Look I am not claiming that I know these guys were always natural. But I have no idea if they used, they might all not have.
Or maybe say Tyson dabbled to get jacked again after prison-but muscle has memory, absent evidence, we do not know.

If there is good evidence of using through testing or a narrative like Evan Field's: that is different.
IF someone gets big too fast when already muscular, or gets to a size not possible naturally, that is different.

But some use & you cannot tell at all, & some guys look like Primo Carnero or have that extreme lean height weight ratio-occasionally without systematic weight training or any scientific diet, or in his case before steroids even existed.

 

No offence you don’t know enough to argue with.

 

Yes. Those are some of the many reasons that they would be stigmatized today. But I don't think stigmatizing them like that is fair, from the perspective of somebody interested in boxing history.

 

tested only in the ruiz fight

 

The record acquitted the police for beating Rodney King.

 

He didn't beat Ruiz, though. The rules were pretty clear at that time that if you fail a drug test, you don't win the fight.

 

There’s some leeway in fantasy fight land though, because Toney came into that fight in worse condition than if he had trained properly and not used steroids. He also was coming off a bad biceps injury.

The guy who showed up for Holyfield and Rydell Booker was better than the other heavyweight incarnations of Toney by a good margin, Rahman II being a possible exception.

 

I don't think the assumption that drugs are widespread in boxing is an extreme claim requiring "extraordinary evidence," though.

I mean, if I claimed Muhammad Ali was a magical leprechaun, sure, that would require extraordinary evidence. But the idea that a big-money sport known for corruption and high stakes, which has only limited testing anyway, would contain lots of drug cheating doesn't seem extraordinary. Especially in the 90s and early 00's, when regulation was nonexistent. And when we have good evidence (with few real consequences to the violators) from major figures like Toney and Holyfield.

Even sports with cleaner reputations than boxing have PED problems. The squeaky-clean amateur Olympics recently slapped Russia for burglarizing the testing lab for PED tests...and Russian athletes haven't been uniquely dominant at the Olympic level.

 

True, although I've always thought that we should factor in the chances of failing a drug test into our fantasy fight results (depending on what era's rules are used.) No different than the way we debate whether we should use a 1906 ref for a Jeffries fight.

 

Ali was part Irish though.

 

A sure sign of leprechaun heritage if ever there was one.

Consider your burden of proof met, good sir.

 

Ehh, that would make it similar to an old school NC or newspaper decision if the fight came off.

Holyfield in fantasy fights is pretty much the juiced version bc that’s almost the only version.