The cancellation of the middleweight title unification between Janibek Alimkhanuly and Erislandy Lara is a wasted opportunity to bring some identity to a lost division. Alimkhanuly, holder of the WBO and IBF titles, was scheduled to face WBA champion Lara this Saturday as part of the Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view headlined by Lamont Roach vs. Isaac Cruz. The winner would have emerged as the clear-cut top fighter at 160lbs, an attractive opponent for ascendant champion and star Terence Crawford, and just one belt away from undisputed status.
Instead, the fight was scratched after Alimkhanuly returned an adverse finding for the banned substance meldonium in a pre-fight VADA test. While Alimkhanuly has professed his innocence, the fight has already been canceled, with Lara now scheduled to defend his belt against Johan Gonzalez. Promoters were prepared for a contingency, as Gonzalez was already scheduled to compete on the undercard.
Fighters failing drug tests is nothing new, but typically we only find out after the fight takes place. However, with new advances in drug screening, thanks in particular to the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA), positive tests are now being revealed before someone can strike their opponent with a banned substance in their system. The detection of a banned substance usually leads to the fight’s cancellation, though it isn’t unheard of for sanctioning bodies to still green-light the fight, as was the case when Subriel Matias tested positive for ostarine in a VADA test ahead of his January 10 fight with Dalton Smith. The WBC ruled that the positive test for the substance, which can boost testosterone levels and stamina, was due to contamination.
Sometimes the fights do get canceled, but the two fighters still end up meeting down the line, as was the case when Conor Benn tested positive for clomifene before his first scheduled meeting against Chris Eubank Jnr in October of 2022, only to split a lucrative pair of bouts with his rival.
Other times, the moment simply passes and we’re left to wonder what would have happened. Here are five instances where a fight was canceled due to a failed pre-fight drug test and was never (or hasn’t been) re-scheduled.
Ike Quartey vs. Pernell Whitaker
This welterweight showdown was scheduled to take place on April 25, 1998, but the fight probably shouldn’t have ever been made. Whitaker, fresh off his decision loss to Oscar De La Hoya, was immediately entered into a WBA elimination bout against Andrey Pestryaev with the winner to face Quartey. Whitaker had originally won the ho-hum bout, but tested positive for cocaine in a post-fight drug test. The result was changed to a no-contest, but the WBA reinstated Whitaker after ruling that his urine specimen had been improperly obtained. On top of that, they also sanctioned a fight between Whitaker and Quartey for their welterweight title.
Part of the conditions for reinstatement was that Whitaker would be subjected to random drug testing. After Whitaker once again tested positive for cocaine in the first test, he was suspended for six months and entered drug rehab. The fight was canceled, costing Whitaker a reported $3 million purse, and Quartey was denied a big fight opportunity, subsequently sitting out all of 1998. It wasn’t all bad for Quartey, as he earned $4.5 million for his next fight against De La Hoya, which he lost in a razor-thin decision. Whitaker-Quartey was replaced on the HBO schedule by the light heavyweight fight between Roy Jones and Virgil Hill.
Jarrell Miller-Anthony Joshua
You’ve got to wonder how often “Big Baby” Miller wakes up at night asking himself what could have been if he had just made it to the ring on June 1, 2019. Miller was the originally scheduled opponent for Joshua’s U.S. debut at Madison Square Garden. The bout would pit Joshua, then the IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight champion, against an undefeated, tough-talking New Yorker who could test his mettle. All of that came crashing down when Miller failed two VADA tests, the first for GW501516, and then a second test which came back positive for EPO and HGH. The New York State Athletic Commission denied Miller a license to box, and the opportunity fell to Andy Ruiz Jnr, who got off the canvas to score one of the biggest upsets in heavyweight boxing history, dropping Joshua four times en route to a seventh round stoppage. Miller later claimed that he was set to make $10 million for the canceled fight.
Miller would get another opportunity the following year, when he was signed by Top Rank and given a July 9 fight date against Jerry Forrest. That fight also fell through when Miller tested positive for an unnamed banned substance in a test administered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which resulted in his contract with Top Rank being terminated.
Deontay Wilder-Alexander Povetkin
If meldonium sounds familiar, it might be because of what happened in 2016 with Povetkin. The Russian heavyweight entered the substance into the ever growing boxing lexicon when, ahead of a WBC heavyweight title bout against Deontay Wilder scheduled for May 21 in Moscow, the mandatory challenger Povetkin failed a VADA test for meldonium, which was only added to the list of substances banned by WADA at the beginning of that year. Povetkin’s promoter Andrey Ryabinsky claimed that Povetkin had taken the substance before it was added to the prohibited list. The fight was canceled about a week before it was scheduled to take place, and Wilder instead got a hometown defense against Chris Arreola in July of that year, stopping him in eight rounds. The following year, Wilder won a $5 million civil judgment in New York City in a lawsuit against Povetkin over the canceled fight.
It probably didn’t help Povetkin’s case that, in the time between the aborted Wilder fight and the verdict in civil court, Povetkin had another fight canceled due to a failed drug test, this time in December of 2016, when his fight with Bermane Stiverne was canceled less than 24 hours before the first bell in Russia. This time the banned substance in Povetkin’s system was ostarine.
Lamont Peterson-Amir Khan II
When a fighter fails a drug test, contamination is usually their first claim. Very rarely does a boxer admit to having intentionally ingested the substance. That was the case however in 2012, when a rematch between IBF/WBA junior welterweight champion Lamont Peterson and Amir Khan, scheduled for May 19, 2012, was canceled after Peterson tested positive on a VADA test for synthetic testosterone. Peterson admitted to taking the substance, but says it was due to testosterone pellets that had been implanted in his hip by a doctor who had prescribed them due to low testosterone levels. Though the fight’s cancellation denied Khan an opportunity to avenge his split decision loss from the previous year, it vindicated him somewhat, as he labeled Peterson “a cheat.” In an odd twist, the WBA stripped Peterson for the failed test, but the IBF didn’t, stating that they were giving him a pass because the synthetic testosterone had been prescribed for a medical condition.
Billy Joe Saunders-Demetrius Andrade
This list will conclude where it started: with another pre-fight VADA test. This test, which produced an adverse finding for the banned stimulant oxilofrine, saw Saunders’ reign as WBO middleweight champion come to an unceremonious ending ahead of a mandatory defense against Andrade that was scheduled for October 20, 2018 in Boston. That cancelled fight cost Saunders a $2.3 million purse, but the show still went on. Faced with the likelihood of being stripped, Saunders vacated the title, and Andrade wound up winning the title with a shutout
of Walter Kautondokwa on that card. Andrade would make five defenses of the belt, while the WBO would end up giving Saunders another title opportunity a division up the following year, with him winning the 168lbs title by unanimous decision. Saunders would eventually cash that belt in for a mega-bucks unification opportunity against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, making a reported $8 million for that fight. Ironically, neither Andrade and Saunders have fought since suffering their first defeats, in 2023 and 2021, respectively.
