Tyler Denny has questioned why Janibek Alimkhanuly has been allowed to retain his WBO middleweight title after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium.

It was in December when the Kazakh’s unification contest with Carlos Adames was cancelled at late notice after he failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs, and it took until earlier in March for the IBF to strip him of the status of champion, which they also did on the grounds of his inability to make a mandatory defence of their title.

The WBO in February suspended him for a year. The Kazakh, 32, has also been suspended until May 31 by the Kazakhstan Federation of Professional Boxing and until June 1 by the Association of Boxing Commissions in the United States.

He does, however, retain one of the titles that Denny – who on Saturday at London’s Copper Box Arena fights George Liddard for Liddard’s British and Commonwealth middleweight titles – and others in their division are working to challenge for.

Denny – at 34, 11 years Liddard’s senior – was nearing a world-title fight in 2024 when as the European champion he lost to Hamzah Sheeraz, who has since moved up to super middleweight, in two rounds.

“I don’t know why it took so long for the IBF to strip him, and the WBO’s still not stripped him – I can’t get me head ‘round it,” Denny told BoxingScene. “Boxing doesn’t help itself with these crazy, weird decisions. It should be a no-brainer. He should have got stripped. If you feel like you’re innocent, everyone else has got to get on with life until you can clear [yourself]. 

“It’s not like you’re going to jail – you’re just getting stripped of a belt. You can’t defend it anyway, so let everyone else work for it. If, somehow, you [prove] someone’s innocent, you can then fight for the title, can’t you? Not hold everyone up.

“There’s too much of it though. There’s too much of it, really. It’s often as well. 

“It’s baffling. It’s absolutely baffling. I can’t make no sense of it. Even the fighters who are getting caught are claiming innocence and they’ve got the right lawyers and stuff. I don’t know what happened to the strict liability – it seems to have gone out the window, don’t it? You get caught, there’s always an excuse. I’m sure everyone can make an excuse if they get caught doing something bad in life. If you get caught, you should get banned, and that’s it.”

Meldonium assists in endurance and shortens recovery time while training.