Old time fighters who would have been acused of taking steroids today

sounds like roidish guy to me

i really see how the thread is interesting, i mean jumbo may not have even done roids but its like "how is a person that strong or big?"

 

Jumbo was a petty thug and did time in prison. Steroids/anabolics are actually huge in prison, lot of guys put their endless free time to lifting weight and getting ****ing freaky big.

Guess only the strong survive in that world, huh?

 

Here is another roid user - the aftermath - the proof - bad stuff - this is former heavyweight Bob Hazleton who fought George Foreman in 1969 - now a double amputee do to years of roid abuse

 

Ignorance is bliss. For you, that is.

 

Yes, that's about right. Even up into the 1970s and early 80s there was controversy and doubt among scientists as to whether taking testosterone and its derivatives (anabolic steroids) even really improved athletic performance. Obviously the ones working closely with it knew it did.
I think it's fair to assume that anabolic steroid use began to spill over from bodybuilding/weighlifting circles into other sports in a significant way sometime in the late 60s, into the 70s, depending on geography. As for America and boxing, maybe California might be seen as a place it became popular early, due to that being the mecca for the bodybuilding community.

But testosterone WAS available much earlier, and with the amount of individual fight doctors and potion pushers in the fight game it's not unlikely someone somewhere had injected a fighter with steroids sometime earlier than it became more widely known even in strength sport circles.
That's why i say pre-1940s should be the real pre-steroid era. (testosterone was synthesized in the mid-1930s).

From wikipedia : "Testosterone propionate is mentioned in a letter to the editor of Strength and Health magazine in 1938; this is the earliest known reference to an anabolic steroid in a U.S. [url]

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[/url] magazine."

That's an American magazine. Therefore it's not unlikely that the drug could have found its way into some boxers pre-1950.

I agree.
It's also wrong to jump to the notion that if someone's physique is NOT particularly impressive he can't be using drugs.

 

i think thats a good point too

 

There really aren't many heavyweights with physiques like you'd see in the most muscular 90s fighters before steroids.

Jeffries, Johnson, McVey were all reasonably large, lean men, yes, but they didn't have the ridiculous proportions or degree of lean muscularity that you saw post steroids. And it's open to question whether these guys lifted. They certainly would have wrestled regularly. Jeff, at least, trained with wrestlers, who were fans of weight training even back then.

Tom Sharkey is about as close as you're going to get to a guy who looks like he eats PEDs with his morning cereal. Again, he comes from the early experimental era, when there's more possibility of resistance training, wrestling, etc. in the boxing curriculum. (EDIT: Also, they trimmed down almost as if they were making weight even at heavyweight. And dehydrated themselves. So there were other things going on to make them look leaner; it didn't mean that they were necessarily able to bulk up effectively, though.)

Circa 1920 to 1939, when boxing training protocols start to become more standardized and recognizable, and steroids aren't yet invented, there really aren't any huge guys. There's Carnera, sure, but Carnera kind of proves the rule, since there's extreme genetic stuff going on there.

Baer gives you a far better idea of what you'd expect from boxing training, IMO. Baer was considered a physical marvel in those days. And while he was unquestionably in excellent condition and well proportioned, he was not a massively muscular guy. There's the typical (thin) layer of fat on him that most healthy guys have when they're not doing anything exotic or starving themselves.

 

Oh, goodness, not that Modern (Steroids) Nutrition again.

 

Oh Richard. Hey Rich do people ever call you D1ck for short?

 

Jack Johnson

 

Dick Tiger too ..

 

Rich would do just fine, but Steroids are still Steroids or Modern Nutrition, Lol.

 

Aside from McVea/McVey, I'll nominate Johnson also. Though always well muscled, Lil Arthur was very slender and lean early career. Basically underfed. I guess with more money in his kick for better food, preparation, conditioning and further muscle development, I feel there was a notable change in Johnson's muscle mass leading into and after annexing the title from Burns. Suffice to say, Johnson went from 194 lbs against Tommy to a rock solid 208 lbs vs Jeffries.

Obviously Jack didn't look quite as shredded as he did pre title but he did look that much bigger again with no spare flesh. His musculature isn't always apparent in some photos while in others he looks super jacked. Kamikaze's avatar is the perfect example of same. I could be wrong but I think that photo of Jack posturing to take a dive was around the time of the Ketchel fight. If not, it might've been closer in time to the Burns fight. His musculature also isn't so apparent on film unless you zoom and perhaps even pause the films. Through the Flynn fight, though obviously bigger Jack's muscles don't really jump out at you. However, the short clip at the end of the fight showing Johnson acknowledging the spectators shows Jack's physique off to best advantage. Even prior to the Willard fight , shaking hands with McVey etc., though overweight, Johnson's arms still looked very pumped and rock solid.

If measurements are to be believed, Johnson's biceps were listed as 14 1/2" against Burns but for Jeffries, a much more impressive 16" was claimed for each arm. McVey was always listed as 16" and as per the photos, it seems a justified claim.

The other interesting thing re Johnson was how quickly his musculature appeared to atrophy after his prime years (ala RJJ). Stripped of his muscular armory, Jack didn't appear anywhere near as big as he once did. Finally, no disrespect to the man but in later years, perhaps also the suggestion of HGH (Head Growing Huge)? Even accounting for a shrunken body, Jack's noggin appeared to continue growing.

Okay, no need for the grappling hook, I'll show myself out......

 

Jake LaMotta.

Absolutely dwarfed most of his opponents.

Oh wait, they were welterweights and he was a super middle.

Never mind.

 

Jem Smith.