Steroids in the 60s ?

Winning is everything to the elite professional athlete. I believe most of them use steroids or other PEDs.

The top guys are the ones who have the natural potential AND work hard/have amazing determination AND use the correct drugs.
That's just the reality of modern sports.

 

Talk about having your head buried in the sand......

 

Steroids is just the icing on the cake, yes.
But of course it makes a massive difference.
Tommy Morrison said in an interview he'd have never been more than a cruiserweight if he hadn't used them.

 

Yeah, probably.

As an athlete you also have the reality of competitors probably using, so even if you really don't want to cheat you'll quite likely have a substantial disadvantage if you don't. One only have to look oneself - who would fancy putting down all that work and taking all those risk but still have little of chance of big success because you don't want to do the cheating your competitors do?

 

i absolutley don't agree that taking steroids is the mark of a mentally weak individual.

for one thing your statement ignores someone who is already a world class fighter and then takes steroids.

was evander hollyfield mentally weak when he was being a quality am and cw champ? or did he suddenly and magically become mentally weak when he took steroids? or are you the only person to advance the theory that he was using since being a teenager(or that he never did)?

How about lamotta? he supposedly used late in his career, did he become weak once he took them or was he mentally weak throughout his career?

I assume you are talking about a situation where a fighter has always been using and would, understandably, feel less than 100% without them. This has certainly happened before, but i'm going to suggest that it isn't the norm and most users aren't in this catagory.

 

Exactly. That's absolutely the case in many sports and has been for many years.
In the case of boxing there's still a degree of leeway, a little bit of room for non-users to compete, unlike, say, weightlifting, throwing or sprinting, but it's a rare little space and few will want to try it there. Certainly at heavyweight.

 

James Toney's steroid abuse looks like it hit its peak around the Rydell Booker fight. That was broadcast on Fox Sports. I believe there's film on YouTube. He looks like a body builder in that match. His arms, chest, shoulders and back muscles are just bulging.

It was his fight after Holyfield and before Ruiz (where he did test positive).

Toney was out of his mind that night against Booker, too. I recall him walking out of the ring, walking into the parking lot and taking his trunks off after the bout. The cameras followed him. He's walking around out there ranting with his pants off and his protector on.

It was bizarre, to say the least.

 

Yeah, you're not wrong.
He looked swole, bro.

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His deltoids and trapezius and pecs are incredible for a guy we remember as a middleweight.
He seems to bulge as the rounds go on.

 

"How about lamotta? he supposedly used late in his career, did he become weak once he took them or was he mentally weak throughout his career?"

If he used them later in his career then yes I would say it was growing fears that his ageing body was slipping, that he was becoming 'inadequate' relative to what he was.

May I ask, do you use, or have you used, steroids yourself?

 

so he was physically less and took something to keep physically good, not really a mental issue imo.(it could have helped him in theory, in reality the effectiveness of what he was doing was likely low)

what about all of the Pride guys who were part of a company that encouraged athletes to use (and specifically had no testing in the contracts). we are talking mma fighters with years of experience suddenly becoming mentally weak because they are signed to a new company? doesn't seem like the most likely scenario, much more likely they were the same guys just physically enhanced by the steroids. what about when they left for a different company and shrunk back down, did mental strength return as they got clean?

the way i see it, and the way many ex sportsmen have explained it, they were doing what they thought they needed to do for their careers.
some reasons that are given by people who were caught;
i had to or i would have lost my job and likely career.
my training was interrupted by injury but i had too much tied up in that event to miss it or under perform.
that's how the previous guy won.
i did what the coach said to do.


you may ask, apart from being prescribed it for healing, no i haven't, i am not a pro sportsman or bodybuilder. please don't try to say that it means anything. I can learn about mars without going there and i can, and have, taken courses, read medical papers and generally understood peds in sport, without shrinking my balls.

refusing to use can certainly be a sign of confidence and strength, but the other way around is far murkier than you are allowing for.