The earliest known case of PEDs in boxing ?

I do know what im talking about because i lived it and can tell you that just because the law hadnt caught up with something doesnt mean its easy to get. The fact that it wasnt being regulated is a better illustration of just how rare it was and if you knew anything about the proliferation of steroids you would know this.

 

This isnt true. Period. You can gain weight using steroids while training for stamina, that is in fact why many people use them. In the old days bodybuilders avoided cardio like the plague because they didnt want to lose any muscle. Steroids allowed a bodybuilder the ability to gain or maintain muscle mass while doing cardio to stay/get lean.

 

i didn't write that you couldn't, i wrote that if you are eating the same amount that you burn then you won't gain weight, as far as i know that's true regardless of steroids.

 

Supply wasn't an issue, unless you're talking about using natural HGH harvested from cadavers. That wasn't necessary once the hormone was synthesized, which happened well before when you think steroids, etc entered boxing.

The lack of regulation had nothing to do with rarity or difficulty to access and everything to do with PR- they werent a big deal until Ben Johnson (a Canadian) got caught on his 100m record run. That is what began the steroid witch hunt in the U.S.

You can school me on pretty much everything boxing related, but for this particular niche, you're off base. Steroids were plentiful enough for high school and college athletes to get them, let alone professionals. If you didn't go the black market route, it only took a doctor (which is exactly what football teams did, on the company payroll). A boxer, and more commonly, his promoter or team member, could've easily obtained them.

Rarity and difficulty to obtain simply weren't issues. It wouldn't have taken 25 years for them to filter to boxing, which above most (if not all) sports, has participants willing to do anything to win. You really think the athletes waited until the stigma of steroids turned negative to start using them? No offense, but that seems like wishful thinking.

Applying today's sensibilities and attitudes to the steroid climate in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's doesn't work.

As for the muscle bound bit, the U.S. track team didn't seem too muscle bound in the 68 Mexico Olympics. How muscle bound you got depended on how you trained and what doses you took of what drug. People who don't abuse them can take doses and work out in such a way that you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking.

I'm sure there was a time gap of when steroids gained traction in the Olympics and when they entered boxing. It wasnt 20-30 years. That's just how long it took for a generation of heavyweights to all look like comic book heroes because the "keeping up with the Jones'" effect just kept gradually getting worse. Bulking up is just one aspect. But the uses they have range from muscle maintenance during cardio to faster injury recovery and bounce back from the daily training grind/increased training capabilities. You wouldn't know it just by looking in many cases.

 

Do you think Ben Johnson being a Canadian was unfairly used a scapegoat? Fair enough he cheated but so did the others. Carl Lewis was on PED's in the Olympics, of course he was the darling of America. I'd even say our Linford was juiced up to the eye***** aswell.

 

You are arguing "could have" i am arguing whether they did or not. You are pretending steroids exploded on the boxing scene like a bomb in the 60s/70s or earlier and if that was the case we would have seen it much earlier than the 90s when athletes across the board started doing things too miraculous to be true and records across the board toppled like dominos. I already said there was likely the odd case here and there but you are arguing that it was widespread by 60s or 70s and that simply isnt true. Comparing olympic swimming, weight lifting, or track to boxing is apples and oranges. You are talking two totally seperate and totally different cultures. Furthermore we have the oral history of steroids in those sports and can largely piece it together in sports like baseball, football, cycling, etc. With boxing we dont have it because it wasnt there. Where there is smoke there is fire and you didnt start seeing smoke until the late 80 and early 90s in boxing. Prior to that there were probably users, increasingly so throughout the 80s. But prior to that it was exceedingly rare the further back you go and this is supported by the lack of evidence, anecdotal, circumstantial, or otherwise. If you have anything solid beyond "Mike Weaver looked jacked" im all ears but im not hearing anything beyond that and what some enterprising boxer might do if all the stars aligned in favor of your argument.

 

I think he was absolutely unfairly used as a scapegoat.

5 of the other 7 runners in that race went on to test positive or be involved with PED's. Lewis, as you mentioned, was one of them.

I'll call it like it is, even if the news sucks- there's a long history of denial when it comes to PED's here, and people tended only get into an outrage when a foreigner who happens to be on them beat us.

That foreigner can now be someone from a different country in the Olympics, but also a player in a different sport we don't like, a different team than we like, or a different individual performer. Believe it or not, I actually heard many people applauding football when the steroid scandal in baseball hit as being a clean sport. Couldn't be further from the truth, but that's the way the witch hunt goes.

Ben Johnson wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time- he was from the wrong place at the wrong time. That's why he's a posterchild for steroid cheats despite being in a race that was dirty from top to bottom.

 

great post.

it always benefits the sport to make a scapegoat of the winner rather than admit it is an institutional problem. there's a good reason they never awarded armstrong's tdf wins to anyone else. the same riders, owners, managers and doctors are still working in the sport today.

 

You clearly don't know what you're talking about on this.
You can find thousands upon thousands of people who can tell you how easy steroids were to get in America in the '60s and '70s. (and most the rest of the world too of course).
As I pointed out already, if boxers knew people (doctors, trainers etc.) who had access to strong painkillers and cortisone, then why not anabolic steroids? These are standard medicines, mass produced and marketed, not 'rare' at all.
The other point of course is that in several other sports anabolic steroid use was totally widespread, and freely available in hundreds of gyms. Unless boxers live in a bubble, a separate society from the rest of us and all their peers, their would have been considerable spillage over the boxers at the elite level.

I haven't once suggested that steroids are LESS available now overall, or that use in the 60s and 70s was as high as now, but you can be sure that it was already significant.

Commercial production of testosterone in America dates back to the 1940s. It predates cortisone. It was heavily marketed as a rejuvenating drug in the 1940s and early '50s, it was known and available to any physician and any half-informed male. It would be absurd to think boxers and their coaches would have remained oblivious to the stuff.

 

A 6th yr med student told me that steroids kill z mandibula

 

Khaosai Galaxy, a batamweight I believe in the 70s. The guy has a monster for his weight class.

 

Obviously pre-80's-90's, steroids were available and being used in sports applications, but just I would think there would be accusations abound concerning certain losses from fighters; defectors from competing gyms/promoters/trainers or some other bullspit.

There is a definite lack of anectdotal evidence to support this.

Just as today, we would have had gym mates, sparring partners, and some fighters themselves accusing/admitting to steroid use.

Drugs in general got huge in sports during the 80's, and that's where I'd put my money on steroids becoming "normal" or mainstream in boxing.

 

Bump

 

I've used some mild pro-hormones, which are technically steroid precursors

 

One of the best PEDs, which will have been around a long time are amphetamines. They were used extensively in WW2. They give you endless energy, they take away pain, they're the ideal drug of choice for boxing imo. You can bet any boxer that used amphetamines, would look to use them for training and boxing.

Good post. I remember reading about someone wanting to do a study in the early 70s on a US college campus on the difference in progress between shot putters who used steroids versus shot putters who didn't use steroids. They couldn't do the study because they couldn't find any shot putters who didn't use steroids.

We know they created an Olympic PED banned list in the 60s, because most athletes were using different types of PEDs. Any boxer who went to the Olympics would have access to the doctors who would prescribe steroids and other PEDs. We know the Soviets did this. We know the British did it from a Scotish Sprinters testimony. We can be pretty sure the more successful American team did it.

I'm pretty sure it's documented that Muhammed Ali had testosterone injections in the 70s also