By Ben Jacobs
Ahead of Larry Olubamiwo’s return at Prizefighter on Thursday night, the heavyweight contender expanded a little more on his recent ban for using performance-enhancing drugs in an interview with BoxingScene.
Do you feel there’s a discrepancy with the bans that are issued to boxers and is it unfair to certain fighters?
If you get an athlete in any other sport, athletics for instance, they get banned for the same amount of time. It seems like in boxing you get different treatment. In the US, and let me give you an example: James Toney, for his first offence was banned for 90 days. He’d probably take that time off anyway. The second offence he was banned for 9 months. I mean, that’s not even as long as I was banned for my first offence.
Then there’s Lamont Peterson and a few other guys. Mickey Bey, he had a massive testosterone limit and was only banned for 3 months, in Britain you would get a two year ban. It really is frustrating and quite annoying to some fighters and fans alike. Until it’s dealt with, you know, it’s going to continue the same way.
I think ever since my case there has been a slight step up in testing which culminated in a lot of other boxers in Britain getting caught. Have they kept up that same level of testing? I highly doubt it because of budget constraints. I even heard a while back that the budget from the anti-doping program is being slashed. So they have to work within the budget which is going to lead to less testing being done.
Do you expect to be tested more now that you’re back?
They turned up just before I was let back into the sport, they haven’t turned up since. I expect I will be target tested before and after Prizefighter. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I expect that. I’m not using anything. They can test me every hour if I can produce enough pee or blood to do that!
I’ve got nothing to worry about, so I expect to be target tested. I was even warned by the British Boxing board that I can expect that.
Obviously there are budget constraints when it comes to the doping programme. But i think as much as possible they will look to target test me. Bring it on I say!