Is Pacquiao-Mayweather debacle beginning of change in boxing's drug culture?

[huge285]

Is Pacquiao-Mayweather debacle beginning of change in boxing's drug culture?

Posted Jan. 19, 2010 at 12:21pm
By Mark Zeigler


Buzz up!

Usually, when athletes came to Victor Conte and his BALCO empire for help taking performance-enhancing drugs and evading detection, Conte would carefully research their sport’s anti-doping program first -- scrutinize its banned substance list, examine when and where and how often urine or blood samples would be collected, determine which laboratories would test them using what type of equipment -- and devise a detailed plan to beat it.

When boxer Shane Mosley and his handlers approached him in the summer of 2003, Conte didn’t waste his time.

They told him Mosley might be tested the day before the September fight in Las Vegas and immediately after it. That’s all Conte needed to know, all he needed to hear. No reason to sift through pages and pages of drug protocols, or sleuth out the calibration levels of a lab’s high resolution mass spectrometer, or calculate clearance times of detectable substances in case of an unannounced test during pre-fight training.

“That’s announced testing,” the doping guru says. “That’s IQ testing. If that’s all they do, why do I need to find out what’s on the banned list? And I never did bother.

“Boxing’s testing program is beyond a joke. It’s worthless.”

Conte had that thought in the summer of 2003, when he loaded up the 32-year-old Mosley with endurance-boosting erythropoietin (EPO) and a cocktail of other verboten substances for what would be a landmark 12-round decision over Oscar De La Hoya. The difference now is that more and more people are questioning boxing’s commitment to anti-doping as well.

For that, thank the demise of the March 13 superfight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. presumably because the former refused to meet the latter’s demands about pre-fight drug testing. Mayweather wanted regular urine and blood testing in the months, weeks, even days leading up the fight, similar to the anti-doping protocols most Olympic athletes face; Pacquiao agreed to some provisions and refused others. No fight.

So the public doesn’t get the epic clash it has been clamoring for. The sport doesn’t get a much-needed infusion of mainstream attention. The two boxers and their promoters don’t get preposterously rich, and Las Vegas doesn’t get a respite from the recession. But doping and boxing suddenly find themselves in the same sentence and that alone, Conte and others say, may be the greatest legacy of Pacquiao-Mayweather, regardless if they ever meet inside the ropes.

“Whether he meant to or not, Floyd has shown that the process is tainted and it’s going to be hard to overlook now,” says Margaret Goodman, the former chief ringside physician for Nevada and an outspoken critic of the sport’s anti-doping policies. “You just can’t ignore it any longer. There just is no rationale.”

Adds Conte: “I see this potentially as an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of drug testing. And here’s why I think this is so important for boxing and MMA: When you increase speed and power, you’re also increasing potential damage to the opponent. Crushing a baseball is one thing. Crushing a guy’s brain is another.”

* * *

Keith Kizer is the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which oversees professional boxing, Mixed Martial Arts and other forms of “unarmed combat” in the state. He is talking about the commission’s drug testing program.

“You have to be vigilant,” Kizer says. “And I think we are.”

Are they?

It depends on your perspective, depends where in the realm of relativity you sit. Pro boxing has no national or international governing body that mandates drug testing, leaving it to individual states in this country. And compared to most states, Nevada indeed is vigilant.

Texas , for instance. Instead of Mayweather in Las Vegas , Pacquiao will fight March 13 against Joshua Clottey at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium outside Dallas . The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation will oversee it.

Its anti-doping program?

Essentially there isn’t one. The state has the authority to demand urine testing for certain performance-enhancing substances “with probable cause,” according to TDLR spokesperson Susan Stanford. Without probable cause to suspect Pacquiao or Clottey are juiced up (neither has failed a past drug test), no drug testing is required to license the fight.

Nevada has upgraded its drug testing program several times over the past decade, ramping up its stimulant testing, then adopting the World Anti-Doping Agency banned substance list, then adding in 2008 the ability to demand random, out-of-competition urine tests at the commission’s discretion for any boxers licensed by the state.

Sounds good, until you consider:

• Under Nevada ’s program, you get 48 hours’ notice to report to the closest accredited lab for a random test, plenty of time for many banned substances to clear your urine. “That’s random testing?” Goodman asks. “That’s random announced testing. They might as well shoot up a flare to tell them a test is coming.”

• In many labs, no one is following you into the bathroom and making sure the urine sample is indeed yours (as doping control officers do in Olympic-style testing), or closely checking identification so someone who looks like you isn’t showing up, or running DNA tests on the urine to rule out imposters.

• Even if the sample is yours, Nevada doesn’t routinely test for erythropoietin (EPO) and several other potent substances that can be detected in urine using more sophisticated, more expensive, more time consuming methods.

• While the Nevada commissioners can demand blood testing, which can find human growth hormone or identify endurance-boosting blood doping not detectable in urine, Kizer concedes they never have.

• While Nevada has the authority to target-test prior offenders or suspicious athletes based on “cause,” it rarely does. Otherwise, Mosley would be subjected to numerous unannounced, out-of-competition tests based on his admission under oath to using EPO and other illicit substances before the De La Hoya fight. “And if you’re not going to do it on him,” Goodman says, “then who are you doing it on?”

• Nevada doesn’t keep a log of previous urine and blood test results to track the longitudinal chemical profiles of athletes, in case certain markers indicative of performance-enhancing drug use appear.

How easy is it to beat a testing program like Nevada’s?

“As simple as walking across the street,” says Travis Tygart. “It’s good for PR, to give the appearance that you’re testing, but nothing more.”

Who is Tygart ?

He is the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which handles drug testing for Olympic athletes in this country using regulations created by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). He’s also the person whom members of the Mayweather camp contacted during negotiations for the Pacquiao fight to learn about the so-called “gold standard” of performance-enhancing drug vigilance.

“It’s a fundamentally different approach,” Tygart says when asked to compare his agency’s program to others in U.S. professional sports. “The WADA approach is to use best practices and policies and procedures to truly protect the rights of clean athletes. Other programs are simply there for PR purposes. … Anybody with a heartbeat can find ways around them.”

Pacquiao initially agreed to three blood tests in the run-up to a March 13 fight -- once at the introductory news conference in January, again 30 days out and in the locker room immediately after the fight. The Mayweather camp shook its head. The next proposal was 24 days out. Another no.

USADA would never agree to such provisions because it amounts to announced testing and because of the wide variety of banned substances an athlete could take in the period between tests. If it is administering the drug program, it chooses when and where to test, and how often. There is no fudge factor. No compromise. No preferential treatment for boxers who stand to make $40 million each from a single fight.

Under USADA rules, athletes must file quarterly calendars of where they’ll be and when, making themselves available for urine and blood testing between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., seven days a week, 365 days a year, anywhere on the planet. Suspicious athletes or past offenders regularly are target tested, sometimes two, three, four days in a row. The urine and blood results are recorded over the years to create a biological profile, so even the slightest change will hoist a red flag.

A comprehensive program, yes. Impervious? Hardly.

Athletes can miss two tests every 12 months without repercussion. Sprinter Marion Jones passed an estimated 160 drug tests in her career before admitting she took steroids. Conte’s stable of BALCO athletes were caught only after USADA obtained a used syringe containing “the clear’’ -- an previously undetectable designer steroid -- and reverse-engineered a test for it.

There are other problems. The blood test for human growth hormone has been around since 2004, and an athlete has yet to be caught with it, perhaps because it can detect HGH going back only two days, if that. There still is no known test for autologous blood doping, where an athlete removes his own blood, stores it and re-infuses it to boost endurance by increasing his levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Even the urine test for EPO, Conte insists, goes back only 19 hours if the drug is administered intravenously. And who knows what new-fangled designer steroids are out there.

“You could test every athlete every day, and even then you might miss something,” Kizer says. “You do what you can.”

* * *

The big question is: Can they do more? Should they?

The true extent of doping in boxing is unknown, certainly. No one is checking off a box on a survey saying they regularly ‘roid up before fights. But the anecdotal evidence is growing, and doping experts say substances like anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and EPO have a bigger impact on boxing than most sports because of their recuperative benefits during heavy training and because of their strength and endurance boost during the actual fight.

There’s also the argument that if doping is so prevalent in pro sports such as baseball and football, why wouldn’t elite boxers be using them as well with so much at stake?

"I looked around and, from what I saw, everybody was doing the same (stuff),” heavyweight Tommy Morrison, an admitted steroid user, said in 2005. “It wasn’t something that was talked about openly. But when you looked around, you could tell.”

Kizer isn’t convinced his program needs radical overhaul to catch the drug cheats.

“I’ve still never had a drug testing expert come to this commission and say, ‘You’re behind the curve, you need to be blood testing, you need to be EPO testing,’” he says. “Mr. Mayweather has every right to demand it. But that’s a private negotiation and not something we’re involved in.”

It is that very demand which is so encouraging to people like USADA’s Tygart , less for its subject than its origin.

“What’s most important here is you have athletes who say we want this,” Tygart says. “We’ve long encouraged athletes to take ownership of their sport. It’s too easy for those who are running a sport and profiting from it to just want to have the best athletes on the field or in the ring, even if they’re all doped up. That shows real progress from the athlete standpoint, that they’re aware of these issues. Hopefully that momentum continues.

“That’s what ultimately happened in the Olympic movement. The athletes brought change. The athletes have to want clean sport. They have to say, ‘We’re not going to fight big fights if there isn’t drug testing in them.’ You don’t want to hijack big fights, but it might take a couple big fights that don’t happen.”

It’s not that easy, of course. If Nevada suddenly instituted USADA-style testing, promoters might take lucrative fights to places with less stringent anti-doping regimens. Nevada also runs into jurisdictional issues by sending someone across state borders in search of a boxer to urinate in a cup. And who’s paying for it? Currently, the Nevada commission foots the bill, which might explain why it isn’t routinely subjecting urine samples to the $400 EPO test.

“Nobody wants this,” Goodman says. “Can you imagine if both fighters agree to testing before the fight, which is what you should do if you want to do it right, and someone came up positive and you’d have to cancel the fight? Can you imagine? Everyone is worried about the money aspect and not the safety aspect.”

Conte is hopeful, just not overly optimistic. Call him cynical, but understand he once had a window into the dark side of doping. He knows how effective these drugs are, how rampant they are, how easy they are to use without fear of detection.

“Here’s the real question: Do they want to know?” Conte says. “Do they really want to know what people are using -- how much and how often and by whom? That’s the question for boxing.”

His answer?

“I’m not sure they do.”


Mark Zeigler is a staff writer at the San Diego Union-Tribune

[Ibarramedia]

To those who really follow boxing, Mayweather's demands were just to find a way to weasel out of the fight. He just wanted to be really difficult. another thing, scuttlebutt had it that MAyweather was using xylocaine, the pain killer which is supposedly banned in 49 states. The reason he really did not want to fight in Texas is because he might get busted for using Xylocaine which he uses to dull the pain in his brittle hands. If Pacquiao had agreed to all the 'testing' demands, all boxers in my opinion would have to go and be tested the same way going forward.

[Diggy]

oh well, Shane took the fight and will follow any testing floyd asks for. That makes manny really suspect and Im a Pac fan.

Im glad for this fight anyway but Im sure pac n floyd will fight sometime if they both stay on a winning path

Floyd vs sugar shane

pac vs clotey

both good fights but not what we as fans wanted

[Triple-H_2005]

Drug testing in professional sports is a joke.

[tp_88]

To those who really follow boxing, Mayweather's demands were just to find a way to weasel out of the fight. He just wanted to be really difficult. another thing, scuttlebutt had it that MAyweather was using xylocaine, the pain killer which is supposedly banned in 49 states. The reason he really did not want to fight in Texas is because he might get busted for using Xylocaine which he uses to dull the pain in his brittle hands. If Pacquiao had agreed to all the 'testing' demands, all boxers in my opinion would have to go and be tested the same way going forward.

Quoted for truth. This post contains everything that has to be mentioned in the thread.

oh well, Shane took the fight and will follow any testing floyd asks for. That makes manny really suspect and Im a Pac fan.

Im glad for this fight anyway but Im sure pac n floyd will fight sometime if they both stay on a winning path

Sorry but... That's just BS. Shane HAS used PEDs in the past, while there is no evidence what so ever that Manny has ever used anything.

And, to make things even more interesting, let's see what Richard Schafer (CEO of Golden Boy Promotions and the guy in charge of both Shane's and Floyd's negociations) had to say in 2008 while negociating Shane's fight:

Whatever tests they want them to take, Shane will submit to that. We are not going to do other tests than the Nevada commission requires. The fact is Shane is not a cheater and he does not need to be treated like one.

They're all a bunch of hypocrites. Opinion X is totally valid when it suits them, when the exact same opinion is used against them it's unbelievable and proof of cheating.

I promise you, Floyd will tell the world that this is the fight between the top2 P4P in the world, and that Shane is such a great fighter. Even though he a couple of years ago said that he had 5 losses, was a cheater, not a PPV-draw etc etc. All of a sudden, when he beats him (which he will, by UD), the victory will "prove" that's he's the greatest of all time. Even though Manny destroyed Cotto who out-boxed Mosley.

I've had enough of that crack-head family. The worst of them all, Roger Mayweather, is hopefully sent to prison for a couple of years soon(for beating up a woman badly) and after that I'd like to see Floyd finally loose so he understands that even though he is a great fighter he isn't the greatest of all times, he doesn't run boxing and he can't make up his own rules while facing the Champion.

[HeavyDutyGuy]

Sugar Ray Leonard, in his prime, would have knocked Maywaethers happy ass out.

[Miami Muscle]

I wanted Pacman to take Mayrunner out!!!

[Ibarramedia]

Sugar Ray Leonard, in his prime, would have knocked Maywaethers happy ass out.

Oh, I agree. And just in case no one knows, Sugar Ray Leonard DID knock out Floyd Mayweather Sr.

[HeavyDutyGuy]

Oh, I agree. And just in case no one knows, Sugar Ray Leonard DID knock out Floyd Mayweather Sr.

Wow, I forgot all about that fight, darn Alzheimers. Good call!

[Diggy]

Sorry but... That's just BS. Shane HAS used PEDs in the past, while there is no evidence what so ever that Manny has ever used anything.

Thats common knowledge about shane and epo..etc, still makes manny look suspect after his espn interview. Im not saying he used anything but in the eyes of the public it makes him looks like he has something to hide, even if floyd is being over the top with the drug testing

[SLICED]

bottom line is : MAYWEATHER IS A FUCKING PUSSY!!!!

[Ibarramedia]

Floyd Sr. was smoking crack when he said that. All the haters have are excuses. Manny's legal team are considering suing Floyd Mayweather Sr. for his comments. Alez Ariza is a great conditioning coach who implemented the high interval training and plyometrics to Manny's training regimen. Manny also has a dietician and nuritionist Teri Tom who monitors all the food and drink Manny takes in. They have records of everything since the David Diaz fight.

I find it intriguing that everyone says that when Manny fights Oscar De LA Hoya that he will be killed because of the size difference. He beats Oscar and everyone says, well he was weight drained and a shell of his former self. A shot Fighter. They then say that if he fights Ricky Hatton, he will be killed because Ricky is unbeaten at 140. He absolutely destroys Ricky and then everyone says that He was tailor made for the Pacman or that He overtrained. Manny challenges Miguel Cotto for his Welterweight title and everybody says he will be killed because he is a true Welterweight and will weight upwards of 160 after rehydrating and his is the best body puncher with his left hook today. He bludgeons and pummels Miguel last Saturday and everone says that Margarito broke him and Clottey punished him although he won that fight. Just face it. Manny is very good. No excuses.

Pacquiao’s nutritionist Teri Tom called Floyd Mayweather Sr.’s charge that the Filipino icon takes steroids to retain his speed and power despite invading higher weight divisions an absurd accusation.
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer except to say that some guys are more genetically gifted than others,” said Tom who was recruited by Pacquiao’s conditioning coach Alex Ariza to join the training team. “I’ve seen over 900 clients in my nutrition practice – that’s a lot of bodies. I know that guys who’ve thought their whole lives that they’re hard gainers often find out that if we pinpoint exactly how much protein and calories they need, and if we monitor and adapt over time, their genetic potential far exceeds their expectations. Obviously, Manny has incredible genetic gifts. Our job is to bring the most out of those gifts.”


Regarding Mayweather Sr. Ariza said he could only expect crazy comments from someone who didn’t even finish high school.“We use supplements, not steroids,” said Ariza. “Someone who never finished high school, like Mayweather, wouldn’t understand the difference and that’s why they make dumb comments.”

Asked how much longer Pacquiao could fight at a high level given his age, Tom said “while he just keeps getting stronger and faster, a couple of more fights and he’ll probably move on to politics.”

Pacquiao, along with every fighter on Saturday night's card, was tested for a lengthy list of banned substances, including the hundreds of PEDs prohibited by WADA. The results of those tests will not be known for another week to 10 days.
But we do know Pacquiao tested clean after his previous 10 fights in Las Vegas, including the two most impressive: the night he made Oscar de la Hoya quit on his stool last December, and his destruction of Ricky Hatton in May.

[Ibarramedia]

This has nothing to do with Manny having anything to hide (he Doesn't)it is about fairness. Manny should not have to go through the aggravation of extra testing oustside of what has already been done. As I stated before, if they want to make this test that they demand of Manny standard, so be it. But every single professional boxer must be tested the same way. Manny does not need to be singled out.

The extra testing procedures can be justified if there had been cases of tampering. In this case, there clearly is none. Furthermore, Manny and his legal team have sued Mayweather,et al. in court for falsely accusing Manny of using PEDs.

[tp_88]

Thats common knowledge about shane and epo..etc, still makes manny look suspect after his espn interview. Im not saying he used anything but in the eyes of the public it makes him looks like he has something to hide, even if floyd is being over the top with the drug testing

Well, 1 year ago the very same people thought it was ludacris to take more tests then the commision asked for. For Manny, the P4P Champion, to stop Floyd from inventing new rules doesn't make him look like a cheater. The commision makes the rules, not Floyd.

[Diggy]

Well, 1 year ago the very same people thought it was ludacris to take more tests then the commision asked for. For Manny, the P4P Champion, to stop Floyd from inventing new rules doesn't make him look like a cheater. The commision makes the rules, not Floyd.

I really wanted to see manny woop floyds ass, guess we'll have to wait and see what happens