Whenever one year makes way for another we often try to think of the positives. If the year that is ending was a particularly bad one, you might be encouraged to sip from the glass half full rather than the glass half empty. You will, if prone to pessimism, then hear it said with regularity: “Come on, misery guts. Try to think of the positives.”
As well as that, and perhaps in opposition to that, there is an urge to remember and reflect at this time of year. It could be fights we watched in the past 12 months. It could be fighters we sadly lost. It could even come in the form of a list: Fight of the Year, Fighter of the Year, and so on.
However you decide to reflect on the past, the end-of-year-listicle period is a way to take stock and celebrate both the sport and the participants who did all they could to make the past year a memorable one. It is they, the winners, we choose to highlight when a year draws to a close – and rightly so. Yet what of the losers?
In this instance I am not talking about the losers in fights, of which there have been plenty in 2025. Instead, I am concerned more with the fighters whose losses were reputational; the fighters who lost both ground and trust; the fighters who hope their behaviour will be forgotten in the new year, not remembered.
I am talking, of course, about those fighters who failed a performance-enhancing drugs test in 2025. For let’s face it, these men and women are as much a part of the story of 2025 as any world champion who unified a weight division, or any two fighters who unified their determination to the tune of a great fight. They are also the boxers whose 2025 should be remembered and recorded and not just brushed under the carpet or consigned to the past. After all, whether we like it or not, a failed drugs test says more about a fighter than any world title they will win, or any great fight they may produce with an opponent. It says much more about the sport, too; where it is going wrong, the huge battle it faces, its rate of progress.
The good news, in respect of this column, is that 2025 was again awash with positive tests, so there is no shortage of nominees. Some popped dirty and were later cleared, some protested their innocence, and some served bans, then competed again before the year was out. But each of them did their bit. Each of them provided either a cautionary tale or encouragement, depending on one’s stance on the matter. Each of them helped to tell the story of drugs in boxing in the year 2025.
For the most high-profile case of the year, look no further than super-middleweight Jaime Munguia. His revenge win over Bruno Surace on May 4 was too good to be true, it turned out, and was soon viewed in a different light when news broke of the Mexican having tested positive for a banned substance in a post-fight urinalysis.
The substance in question was exogenous testosterone metabolites, yet the hope, initially, was that the B sample would somehow exonerate Munguia and clear his name. Alas, no such luck. In fact, Munguia’s B sample merely replicated the result of the A sample, which left the former world champion’s reputation in tatters.
“Today, we can confirm that Jaime Munguia’s B-sample has been opened and analyzed, and consistent with the A-sample, was also positive,” his team confirmed in a statement. “Jaime was present in Utah for the opening of the B-sample, demonstrating his respect for the process and his full commitment to transparency and cooperation at every step. We want to reiterate that this outcome does not change our position: Jaime did not knowingly or intentionally ingest any banned substance. We remain steadfast in the belief that this result was caused by contamination, and we are continuing to take every possible step to identify the source.”
Seven weeks later, another Mexican boxer, Francisco Rodriguez Jnr, inflicted a serious 12-round beating on Britain’s Galal Yafai only to then test positive in a post-fight anti-doping test conducted by VADA (Voluntary Anti-Doping Association). In their notes after the fight CompuBox, the punch counters, lauded the two flyweights’ efforts and said: “Unreal numbers put up in this one between Francisco Rodriguez and Galal Yafai.” And they were right, too. It was unreal. Superhuman, you might say.
The drug for which Rodriguez tested positive that night was heptaminol, a stimulant which, in addition to being used as a masking agent, is known to boost an athlete’s stamina, increase blood flow to muscles and help combat fatigue and boost alertness. It explained his performance, the manner of it. It also applied an asterisk to both the performance and the result.
That same month Lazizbek Mullojonov, who won heavyweight gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics for Uzbekistan, was notified that he had tested positive for a banned substance and was provisionally suspended by the International Testing Agency. The Uzbek’s test, administered out of competition on June 11, returned an adverse analytical finding for methasterone metabolites.
“Methasterone is prohibited under the WADA Prohibited List as S1.1 Anabolic Androgenic Steroids,” a press release noted. “Methasterone is prohibited at all times (in- and out-of-competition) and is a non-specified substance. Methasterone is a synthetic anabolic-androgenic steroid associated with the promotion of rapid muscle growth, increased strength and power.”
As expected, the Uzbekistan Boxing Federation defended their gold medallist following the positive test, suggesting he may have ingested “prohibited doping substances” during a hair transplant the previous year. “Our athlete underwent a hair transplant surgery on November 19, 2024, at a private clinic in Fergana city after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” they said, spit-balling. “It is assumed that during the four-stage surgery and postoperative treatments he took medications provided by the clinic for treatment, which may have contained some prohibited doping substances.”
Mullojonov’s most recent fight took place in November in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. That night he stopped Monyasahu Muritador inside three rounds. His hair looked great.
Some fighters will carry on regardless, you see, just as some fights will go ahead irrespective of any substance taken by one or both boxers during training camp. Rarely does a fight ever get cancelled on account of a pre-fight drugs-test result, unfortunately. That would require proper testing, as well as transparency. Yet now and again we do get lucky and it happens.
This year, for instance, there were at least a couple of high-profile examples of this. One featured Cletus Seldin, a super-lightweight with an aptitude for positivity, whose WBA interim title fight against Kevin Brown in December fell by the wayside due to an adverse finding for testosterone in one of Seldin’s drugs tests. Brown, having by then made weight, fought anyway, with Seldin – who tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone in both 2016 and 2017 – replaced by Amos Cowart, whom Brown outpointed over 10 rounds.
That same month a middleweight unification fight between Janibek Alimkhanuly and Erislandy Lara went up in smoke due to Alimkhanuly returning an adverse finding for the banned substance meldonium in a pre-fight VADA test. As with Brown and Seldin, VADA caught this one early, which meant Lara could still box a clean opponent on the arranged date. In this case, Lara would go on to box Johan Gonzalez, but only after expressing his disappointment regarding Alimkhanuly’s failed test. “He should be punished for cheating,” Lara, the WBA champion, told BoxingScene. “He tested dirty. He’s a younger man – 32 – fighting a 42-year-old man. We’ll see what happens, but he has two titles and he tested positive. He absolutely should be punished.”
Alimkhanuly, holder of the WBO and IBF middleweight titles, claimed to be more shocked than anyone when learning of his attempt to cheat. “I have always supported clean sport,” he stated on social media. “I was surprised when I read the news. VADA took the first test and said everything was clean. I have not made any changes to my vitamins. I don’t know what happened with the second test, so I requested a retest.”
A request for a retest is almost as common as hearing a boxer professing their innocence in the aftermath of a failed test. Often, in fact, the two come as a deal, or a double act, and this year has seen no change on that front. Most of the time, of course, a retest, or the opening of a B sample, serves only to confirm what we already knew and had been told. Yet on occasion there are certain extenuating circumstances which lead to a positive test and sometimes, just sometimes, the positive test does not mean what we think it means.
Take Claressa Shields, for example. She was informed that she had tested positive for marijuana following her February 2 fight in Michigan against Danielle Shields, despite a commission-tested urinalysis and all testing conducted through VADA coming up clean. The test that “got” Shields was an oral swab taken after the fight, which, as far as the Michigan Unarmed Combat Commission was concerned, was all that mattered. They suspended Shields following her win on February 2 and banned her from competing in the state until the completion of an investigation.
In the days to follow it then came to light that two other boxers on that same show, Joseph Hicks and Skylar Lacy, also recorded positive drugs tests, with Hicks, like Shields, caught for marijuana, perhaps the silliest “PED” of them all.
However, for all its silliness, news of Hicks popping for marijuana did at least offer some hope. After all, the fact that Hicks’ urine samples were negative added credence to the belief that something had gone awry with the testing that night. As such, it wasn’t long before Shields was able to prove her innocence. She did so by taking a follow-up test; providing a urine sample on February 8, which revealed a negative result on February 11.
“A urine test — the most reliable testing method — can detect weed for up to 30 days in your urine, and [that] came back negative,” said a defiant Shields. “The moment I received the saliva test result, I acted immediately to schedule a follow-up urine test to ensure complete clarity. These results confirm that I’ve been clean and in full compliance the entire time.”
She later wrote: “I’ve always competed clean, and I stand by that. I take my integrity seriously inside and outside the ring.”
Since cleared of any wrongdoing, it has been theorised that Shields and Hicks were both exposed to second-hand smoke after their fights. In other words, sometimes the reason for a positive test can make total sense.
Sometimes, too, it is hard to know what has happened or who to believe. It is also hard to know what constitutes a performance-enhancing drug these days or understand how some drugs even get into a boxer’s system in the first place.
Just as marijuana implicated Shields and Hicks in Michigan, cocaine was the issue for Jose Benavidez Jnr in February and then Joseph Parker in October. Enhanced by it or not, Benavidez saw a February 1 knockout of Danny Rosenberger struck off when a post-fight drugs test revealed the presence of cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine, while Parker produced a positive test for the same recreational drug following an 11th-round stoppage defeat by Fabio Wardley.
“I was devastated,” Parker told BoxingScene. “You have to do all these voluntary drug tests in camp and then all of a sudden you get a bit of a surprise and shock that you fail on a fight day. So, I’m just going to go through the process of trying to get it cleared, and I want to be in the ring as soon as possible.”
That process is ongoing as we now enter the new year, with Parker, of course, unwavering. Asked whether he had ever used drugs of any kind, recreational or otherwise, the likeable New Zealander said in December: “In the past I’ve enjoyed myself. I wouldn’t say ‘recreational drugs’, but I went out and had a few beers and that. That’s the old me, when I was a young fighter. Now, after every fight, all I do is go home to the wife and kids. My life is on track. I’m focused on living the best that I can live and doing the best that I can do.”
As for Benavidez, his process was a lot smoother and more decisive. For his infraction in early February he was dealt a backdated nine-month suspension along with a $3,750 fine. The result of his fight with Rosenberger was also changed to a “No Contest”.
Some fighters get luckier. Some, like Subriel Matias, can fail a performance-enhancing drugs test and still get the green light to fight by the president of the sanctioning body whose title they hold. Why that is, one can only speculate, but Matias, the latest boxer to receive sanctioning-body backing, can consider himself a lucky boy as one year ends and another begins. He is lucky because despite failing a VADA test for ostarine – a selective androgen receptor modulator known to boost testosterone and endurance – on November 9, the Puerto Rican’s super-lightweight title defence against Dalton Smith, scheduled for January 10, will apparently go ahead as planned. He will by all accounts be placed on probation for one year and undergo further testing at his own cost, but other than that, no harm, no foul, it would seem. In fact, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman declared in Bangkok only recently that he was confident that Matias’ positive test was a consequence of contaminated substances.
“He is not guilty; he has not been found at any level of consuming performance-enhancing drugs,” Sulaiman said last month in Thailand. He then added that his organisation’s Clean Boxing Program would require updating due to the number of supplements on the market that contain substances that are on the WADA banned list. Call it a spring clean. Call it progress. Call it a reason to be positive in 2026.
