Heavyweight PED use, itemized

Some bright spark has collected BMIs for the top 30 rated heavyweights annually (I assume Boxrec's ratings) from the 1920s until the mid-2000s. Results are interesting; they show a pretty steady BMI percentage up until the early 70s, at which point fighters begin a long, steady increase in BMI.

https://boxrec.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48797

 

Yes, although the 80s did see a rise in chubby guys as well. Or so the public perceived it. Junk food use increased at the same time as weight training (and presumably PEDs) did.

 

I agree. Heck, Liston was supposed to be a monsterman around 210.

 

It's also interesting to cross-reference the BMI explosion with the documentation in the mid-century Olympics. There's a book on the 1960 Rome Olympics, which Ali fought in. Even the Western weightlifters back then were a little skeptical of early steroids being useful. So I doubt those drugs had spread to elite boxers by 1960. The testing focused on stuff like amphetamines instead. True, the Eastern Bloc people were using steroids, but I doubt the Western boxing fraternity was in touch with Eastern Bloc sports scientists.

Fast forward a bit, and the Olympics were definitely testing for steroids by 1976.

Between those two points, heavyweight BMI starts its upward march.

EDIT: Duran admitted injecting some kind of PED into himself against Viruet, which was in '75 IIRC. Ali gets thyrolar (not a steroid, but definitely an attempt at potion-brewing) in the late 70s. Hazelton adopts steroids in the later 70s. So the timeline fits pretty well. At least the early adopters in boxing are probably there by the time it's banned in the Olympics.

 

BMI takes height into account. When you say bigger people, do the changes in gene regulation also improve muscularity as well as height / skeletal size?

 

I don't think Ali was being unethical, since as far as I know Thyrolar wasn't a banned substance in boxing.

I think he attempted to use it because he thought it was helping, but he used too much, and it backfired.

I don't know what you mean by a "master plan." I'm not saying Ali got into a smoky room with Dr. Evil and the members of SPECTRE to write out a 50 page plan for taking over the world with Thyrolar. I think Ali used it because he thought it would help him. It didn't, because he used too much. Far from a "master" plan, this doesn't even strike me as a particularly good plan.

 

His doctor might have prescribed it as a PED, and I'm sure Ali would have been willing to take it as a PED if it had been offered as such. I am suspicious whenever an athlete's doctor gives him stuff that could help his performance if used correctly.

Regardless, it initially seems to have worked as a PED, since it trimmed him down. But Ali overused it. So at some point it stopped enhancing his performance, and started hurting it.

 

Which other 70s PEDs would you recommend for Ali?