Who was the earliest world champion you are convinced used PEDs?

I just don't believe modern athletes are clean at the top level. Good protocol to defeat testing, yes, but clean, no.

 

I mean, at some level you'd be seriously risking your health not to use PEDs. Most of your opponents have access to them if they want them, and both of you rely on boxing for your livelihoods. If you don't use a PED, the amount of punishment you're going to take in your next fight (including, let's not forget, damage to the brain) depends on your opponent's sense of sportsmanship and fair play in mirroring your choice to fight "clean."

 

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately.

Usain Bolt was saying how changes to the trainer design can increase a runners time by upto 10%

Are we OK with that, but not OK with certain supplements?

If supplements are safe, legalise them I say.

 

Same thing with bench shirts and deadlift suits even in the most ostensibly straightforward weight lifting sports.

Or technique developments even for stuff like the hammer throw. If you want fair comparisons across eras, force them to throw a wooden handled hammer, strictly limited to the technique Donald Dinnie used.

 

If I'm boxing, and risking my life in the ring to put food on the table(which is almost always how it starts out, their only real avenue in life) and my coach tells me, everyone else is using. People less talented then me will get further in the sport because they're using, I'm sure as **** going to listen to his advice.

 

Sam Langford must have been taking PED's to transition from lightweight to heavyweight successfully.

It is just common sense!

 

If anything, Langford looks the part of a guy who transitioned from lightweight to heavyweight without PEDs.

 

You get my point though.

Sometimes a fighter is just a freak!

 

I think people make a mistake when they look at physiques, since obviously guys with higher body fat have been busted for steroids.

That said, it's at least interesting that even the heavyweights who looked like tanks in the early 20th century -- Johnson, Jeffries, Sharkey -- didn't have the level of lean muscularity that became commonplace in the 1990s. And that's despite some of them using weights, wrestling, dehydrating, and trying to get their body fat % lower than strictly necessary for a heavyweight bout.

McVea is the only guy who might look "normal" in the 90s. (Jeanette had comparably low body fat, but was much leaner.)

 

Also, to answer the thread's question about the first champion who I think used PEDs, I don't know. The real answer is likely a lot earlier than most of us would like to think.

Probably the earliest place you could look would be someone in the 1950s who also had ties to the weightlifting community and seemed to have unusual athletic gifts to contemporary observers. Guys like Randy Turpin. (And no, I am not saying that Randy Turpin was on steroids!)

 

Also, Vikki LaMotta accused Jake of using some sort of early steroids in her biography, FWIW.

 

Primo Carnera would definitely have had the accusation thrown at him, if it had been possible.

George Godfrey as well.

 

An accusation against Carnera would not be far off; it just happens that he was born with a condition that gave him that advantage. Also, which George Godfrey?

Unfortunately, considering that American bodybuilding publications were discussing steroids in 1938, Joe Louis is the last champion we can be sure was pre-steroid.

 

Tyson

 

Modern (Steroids) Nutrition and Modern Training.