Jimmy Ellis's weight jump - the first concrete sign of steroid use in boxing?

Angie Dundee said the biggest problem with Jimmy was how much he loved to eat.

 

I don’t see him lean at 190 plus at all. He looked strong but a bit fleshy like Chris Byrd did opposed to Holyfield who jumped and looked shredded.

 

That wasn't my suggestion at all. But any other fighters gets caught once and they're labeled a cheat the rest of their career.

Why do we assume Ali only used for "vanity" purposes, but we don't give that same benefit of doubt to anyone else .
May be Jared Miller just wants to look good for IG selfies....

 

He was a beanpole. He had plenty of room to gain 30 pounds as he matured. The premise of this thread is "based" totally on unwarranted conjecture.

 

I have to agree with this. He didn't want to enter the ring against a young, lean, fit Holmes, while looking like a middle aged man. If he wanted to try to capture lightning in a bottle, he should have focused on his actual fitness, not how he looked.

 

I'm not sure Ellis was ever really a natural middle anyway. He looked underweight whilst fighting there, as if a stiff breeze might blow him over. Perhaps his handlers tried to squeeze him down to 160 hoping his size would give him an edge over the natural middles. Ellis would have trained down to 160 but probably walked around weighing in the 170s, so it's not as big a leap to 190 as it appears. It's not like he was ripped as a heavy either, if anything he looked a bit pudgy. He also had none of the telltale signs of roid use.

The irony of his career is he was actually a better heavyweight than middleweight.

 

Zurdo reportedly weighed 204lbs on fight night in his contest pre Bivol. If true, that's 29lbs gained in c.30-hours. Obviously that weight gain has nothing to do with steroids, just rehydrating after cutting.

I appreciate dehydration to make weight has become a science in the modern era and extremes such as Zurdo won't have been present in the same day weigh in era.

I've no idea if Ellis was cutting to the extreme at 160, but fighters putting on 10-15lbs in a month between title (where they would have been cutting) and non-title fights, wasn't t uncommon in pre-60's eras, so in theory, a 30lbs gain over 12 months is plausible without steroids.

Don Cockell gained 27lbs in 18 weeks when he first left the LHW division, though he had a glandular condition and wasn't anything like as lean as Ellis at the higher weight.

 

Exactly what steroids do you think Ali would have access to in the 1960s ? Given the forensic coverage
given to all matters concerning Muhammad Ali it should be noted there has never been the slightest
hint that Ali indulged in the steroids usually used for performance enhancement.
I'm not trying to blindly absolve Ali of committing any offence but what steroids could/would he have
used and for what specific enhancement ?
Obviously disregard the one occassion when Ali used diuretics for the Holmes fight.

 

Oh lor ! Ok mate,if you really,genuinely can't see the total absurdity of comparing Ali's brief
indulgence in diuretics to a walking pharmacy like Jarrell Miller well..........let's just leave it at that.

 

"Testosterone was first synthesized in Germany in 193515 and was used medically to treat depression. Professional athletes began misusing anabolic steroids during the 1954 Olympics, when Russian weightlifters were given testosterone."
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Steroids were not at all common until the mid 1950's in the Eastern bloc, then by a became later were used in the west, often from discovering it via Eastern nation coaches.
They exploded to some degree in the general American culture in the 1980's, & in baseball started in the late '80's, & became out of hand there by the mid-'90's.
A teenager gaining such weight, especially when 16 & likely still growing even vertically, is not at all suspicious.