by David P. Greisman
Behind each victory earned in the boxing ring is a fighter who used his fists and his footwork, his mind and his muscles, to prove himself better. Those who accomplish the most do so with more than mere manhood and mettle.
They combine skill and will, earning their victories not just in the ring, but in training, where they hone their craft and raise their stamina, preparing themselves until they are in peak condition, set to face an opponent who has gone through similar rigors to get ready.
Such is the foundation of athletic competition. To be better, one must run faster, jump higher, be stronger. Those are the criteria by which ability is measured. But the competitive spirit leads some to go too far.
Faster. Higher. Stronger. Hard work and natural ability can get athletes there. Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs can get them there faster and even help them surpass what they could have done by natural means alone.
The search for an edge leads them to the sharp point of a needle, to balms, pills and other products of chemistry that amplify their biology. What was once whispered about Olympic athletes from behind the Iron Curtain is now spoken of, in a matter-of-fact manner, about competitors from numerous sports and from around the world.
No Olympic games go by without athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs. Doping accusations and implications have become prevalent among the best in cycling and baseball. Several athletic commissions test boxers and mixed martial artists for banned substances. More than a few pro boxers have tested positive.
In 2006, Rosendo Alvarez and Ricardo Mayorga were caught using diuretics, a substance either for helping them lose weight or as a masking agent to hide other drug use. Orlando Salido tested positive for the steroid nandrolone. Omar Nino had methamphetamines in his system. Michel Trabant tested positive for steroid use. All had previously either fought for or held world titles.
In 2007, James Toney had his second positive steroid test, for stanozolol and boldenone. Two years before that he had tested positive for nandrolone, costing him the heavyweight title he won against John Ruiz. Toney’s opponent for that 2007 fight, Danny Batchelder, tested positive, too, and was suspended for using stanozolol and oxandolone.
Joey Gilbert, best known from his appearance on the first season of “The Contender,” tested positive for a laundry list of substances, including stanozolol metabolite, amphetamine, nordiazepam, oxazepam and temazepam. Timo Hoffman tested positive for an anabolic steroid. And Mariano Carrera saw a middleweight title victory nullified after his post-fight drug test revealed the use of clenbuterol.
Three other fighters never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs but were implicated in investigations into companies that manufactured or distributed steroids.
Shane Mosley testified before a grand jury about his connection to Victor Conte and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, or BALCO, the same company connected to Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and other elite athletes. Mosley admitted to using erythropoietin, or EPO, which produces more of the red blood cells that carry oxygen. Mosley has said he unknowingly took steroids, too.
Jameel McCline was one of several athletes who allegedly paid Signature Pharmacy for steroids, dishing out more than $12,000 for drugs that included the steroids stanozolol and nandrolone, in addition to human growth hormone and the estrogen blocker tamoxifen, prescriptions that the heavyweight contender would have received between March 2005 and December 2006.
Evander Holyfield was also connected with an illegal steroid distribution network. A patient with the name of Evan Fields, who had the same birth date as Holyfield and a similar listed address, allegedly picked up vials of testosterone, Glukor and a brand of human growth hormone from the offices of a private Georgia urologist that were also raided as part of the investigation. The drugs came from Applied Pharmacy in Mobile, Ala. When two reporters called the phone number associated with Fields’ prescription, Holyfield answered.
Five years after they retire, Holyfield, Mosley and Toney will be the three boxers from the above list whose career accomplishments make them the most likely to be voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
But will any past injections prevent their inductions? Boxing writers who cast Hall of Fame ballots must now judge boxers as baseball writers do for baseball players – not just for their bodies of work, but for the work of their bodies, too.
“I would definitely consider it in my ultimate decision,” said Steve Farhood, a longtime boxing journalist whose current duties include working as ringside analyst for Showtime’s ShoBox: The New Generation. “There are certain questions I’d ask. One would be, ‘At what point did steroid use become apparent?’ Two would be, ‘What did he test positive for as a direct result of tests administered by boxing, as opposed to innuendo outside of boxing?’
“We’ve definitely underpublicized this issue,” Farhood said. “If you have an unfair physical advantage in boxing, it could potentially result in death. Whereas if you have an unfair physical advantage in baseball, you hit the ball 40 feet farther and it’s a home run.”
Eric Raskin, contributing editor for “The Ring” magazine and a weekly columnist for RingTV.com, also draws a comparison between baseball and boxing.
“We’re looking at an era in baseball, from the mid-’90s through today, where almost all of the biggest stars have been implicated, and even those who are totally clean are tainted because the fans can’t be sure that anyone is totally clean anymore,” Raskin said. “So the reality is, if a baseball writer isn’t going to vote for a player suspected of steroid use, there’s hardly anybody left to vote for. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez – these were some of the most dominant players of our time. And if you don’t vote for them, but you instead vote for Albert Pujols, what does the Hall of Fame do if you find out 10 years later that Pujols used performance enhancers, too?
“In the end, if I were voting on the Baseball Hall of Fame, I’d vote for anyone who I think would have had a Hall of Fame career, or was on his way to a Hall of Fame career, even without steroids,” Raskin said. “Yes, Bonds and Clemens are cheaters; but they were putting up extraordinary numbers before we suspect they started cheating. McGwire and Sosa, on the other hand, probably wouldn’t have produced Hall of Fame numbers naturally. I realize it leaves a lot of gray area, but in the end, the quality of the pre-steroid numbers is an important factor for me.”
The nature of modern boxing is such that most top-name fighters only get in the ring three or four times a year at most. One positive result for performance-enhancing drugs, then, can only be tied to one fight. A baseball player, however, can have one positive test taint his numbers for an entire 162-game season.
“If a fighter’s biggest wins are all tainted, I wouldn’t vote for him,” Raskin said. “But if just one fight is tainted, and he’d still be a Hall of Famer without that one fight, then I would vote for him.”
T.K. Stewart of BoxingScene.com concurs.
“I don’t think that one positive drug test should disqualify a fighter from being able to gain entry into the International Boxing Hall of Fame,” Stewart said. “Take James Toney, for instance. He has upwards of 80 pro fights over a two-decade long career and has tested positive for steroids a grand total of twice. Should those two positive tests cancel out all of his other accomplishments? The answer to that question for me is ‘no.’
“Look at Shane Mosley as another example,” Stewart said. “He has never had a drug test come back as positive test after a bout. Yet he does admit to using drugs from Victor Conte's BALCO prior to the second fight against Oscar De La Hoya in 2003. Again though, Mosley has never officially tested positive, so how could he reasonably be excluded from the Hall?”
Baseball writers can fall back on a clause in their Hall of Fame criteria, one allowing them to base their voting “upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the team(s) on which the player played.” Some may choose not to calculate how much using performance-enhancing drugs changed a player’s numbers. They may decide against speculating when the player started using those substances. Instead, they can argue that any use takes away from the player’s integrity and character.
Boxing writers have no such clause. And boxing has long been far more lenient to boxers with deficiencies in character and integrity than other sports have been with their foul and felonious athletes. Fighters with criminal records can return to the ring with little trouble, sell tickets and earn millions of dollars. They do not need to worry about sponsors or maintaining a family-friendly image.
The use of performance-enhancing drugs is not yet as common in boxing as it has become in baseball – or, at least, testing has not revealed it to be so. Toney’s positive tests and the connecting of Mosley and Holyfield to illicit companies does not hold the same weight as one of baseball’s best-ever pitchers (Clemens) and several of its great hitters (Bonds, McGwire, Ramirez, Rodriguez) being implicated in steroid use.
Though boxers have tested positive for or been connected to performance-enhancing drugs, only Holyfield, Mosley and Toney have the accomplishments to make them eligible, if not probable, for induction into the Hall of Fame. Their entire careers are not painted over with broad brushes. Instead, only short stretches are tainted.
This is an era when faster, higher and stronger can lead to pills, balms and needles. The writers charged with honoring boxing’s best do so at a time when there is a lack of widespread, prolonged scientific tampering in the sweet science. For now, at least, the methods some go to get an edge have not kept any potential Hall of Fame inductees from making the cut.
The 10 Count
1. Manny Pacquiao’s phenomenal May 2 second-round knockout of Ricky Hatton was seen in at least 825,000 homes in America, a fantastic figure only made public through the reporting of Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
That makes Hatton-Pacquiao the second best-selling pay-per-view not involving Oscar De La Hoya, Evander Holyfield or Mike Tyson, behind the 915,000 buys engendered by the December 2007 bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Hatton.
In this economy, that’s an especially great figure. Yet Rafael noted that promoter Bob Arum didn’t want to reveal those numbers for whatever reason. And both HBO and Golden Boy, which partnered with Arum’s Top Rank Inc. for the card, deferred to him. Never mind that HBO’s parent company, Time Warner, is publicly traded and presumably would owe that information to stockholders.
2. Not such good news for the May 9 rematch between light heavyweights Chad Dawson and Antonio Tarver, which aired on HBO with the “free” replay of Hatton-Pacquiao.
While Hatton-Pacquiao drew a packed house at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Dawson-Tarver 2 did anything but. There were about 2,100 people in attendance at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, but only 1,426 tickets were sold, leaving 1,309 unsold, according to BoxingScene’s own Robert Morales. While Hatton-Pacquiao earned $8,832,950 from ticket sales, Dawson-Tarver 2 pulled in only $170,280.
Dawson-Tarver 2 lasted six times as long and provided a fraction of the entertainment value. And in ticket sales alone, Hatton-Pacquiao earned nearly 52 times as much.
3. Congratulations are due to former lightweight titlist Juan Diaz, who graduated yesterday (May 17) from the University of Houston-Downtown. Diaz, 25, received his bachelor’s degree in political science.
“This feels like I’m becoming world champion for the first time, it’s that big of an accomplishment to me, ” Diaz was quoted as saying in a press release. “After going through school all of the years, it feels like a huge burden has lifted off my back. I’m going to take the rest of this year and next year to focus on boxing and see where it takes me, but I’m also going to take the LSAT review course and apply to law school so that I always have that as an option in the future.”
Diaz balanced his college courses with a still active pro career that saw him capture a lightweight world title in 2004, unifying that belt with two other world titles before losing last year to Nate Campbell. His record sits at 34-2 (17 knockouts).
“When Juan turned pro, he made it clear he wanted to go to college and I insisted on it from the beginning," Willie Savannah, Diaz’s manager, was quoted as saying in the press release. “I’ve always told him he could be whatever he wanted to be, and I’m more proud of him than words can express. He has never slacked off from school and has continued to excel in boxing and school, breaking records in both. I love him like he’s my son and think it’s really important for all boxers to learn from Juan and to earn a college education so they have a plan after boxing is over.”
4. A suspicious substance was taken from Edison Miranda’s corner during his decision loss to Andre Ward this past weekend, according to the Associated Press.
“[T]he substance was in a brown bottle resembling a Vaseline tub apparently hidden in a bag in Miranda’s corner,” according to the report. “When Miranda’s cornermen were spotted taking the substance out of the bag around the fourth or fifth rounds of the fight at Oakland's Oracle Arena, it was seized before officials actually saw it given to Miranda, according to promoter Dan Goossen.”
The report says neither Ward’s trainer nor Goossen are rushing to judgment as to whether the substance was illegal; they’re waiting for the California State Athletic Commission to say just what was taken from Miranda’s corner.
5. Boxers Behaving Badly update, part one: Johnny Tapia is out from behind bars after what was to have been a nine-day jail stint turned into 40 days of incarceration, according to the Associated Press.
The troubled former three-division titlist was supposed to spend nine days in jail as part of his sentence following a recent cocaine relapse and subsequent arrest for violating probation. Tapia was hoping to follow that with a May 16 bout and then an appearance on the new season of VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” reality television series.
But a parole board needed to approve Tapia’s parole plan, a process that usually takes 60 days. In the meantime, Tapia had to stay in jail.
Tapia, 42, has a history of cocaine use, the details of which have been chronicled in this space too often.
6. Boxers Behaving Badly update, part two: Prosecutors withdrew more than a dozen drug and gun charges last week against a former Philadelphia featherweight (say that 10 times fast) due to an investigation into police corruption, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Harold Cancel, 35, was arrested in 2007 and charged, according to the newspaper, with “drug violations, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, disarming a police officer and simple and aggravated assault.”
The deadline for him to receive a speedy trial was May 27, but prosecutors felt that deadline could not be met because a police officer who would need to testify is being investigated for allegedly making up information so he could get search warrants. The police officer was not accused of doing so in Cancel’s case.
7. The best line of that Philadelphia Inquirer story? The description of Cancel as having had “a brief, unsuccessful career as a professional featherweight boxer from 2001 to 2003.”
That’s putting it lightly. Cancel fought seven times. Cancel lost seven times.
8. A brief column intermission for a brief UFC prediction: Anderson Silva will do to Forrest Griffin at UFC 101 in August what Floyd Mayweather Jr. did to Arturo Gatti in June 2005.
9. Speaking of mixed martial arts and boxing, cult street fighter Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson has apparently ended his brief MMA career and will test his mettle in the boxing ring.
Slice made his name in bare-knuckled fistfights posted on YouTube before trying his hands in sanctioned fighting. He flamed out spectacularly in October, losing on primetime, network television against a less-than-imposing opponent.
Shortly afterward, the MMA promotion Slice belonged to, EliteXC, went under. Gary Shaw, a boxing promoter who ran EliteXC, told the Miami Herald that Slice would have his first pro boxing match this August.
To quote Chuck D: Don’t believe the hype. To quote the Wizard of Oz: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Considering Slice’s 14-second knockout loss to Seth Petruzelli in his last MMA appearance, Gary Shaw would be wise to keep Kimbo away from the kind of opponents who present a bad style match-up.
You know, those 205-pound fighters who dent your chin by jabbing with one foot off the ground.
10. One question: Won’t Kimbo have to shave off his trademark beard?
He should. Unless, of course, Kimbo’s just like Chuck Norris. After all, according to minds wiser than mine, there is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com
