Ward refuses to participate in VADA testing

[thuggery]

Someone should write an article on this and help bring it to the public's eye. I didn't even know he blatantly refused drug testing on three separate occasions. That's just horrible. This guy acts all righteous and superior, but he's no better than Berto, Peterson, Mosley and all of the other cheats.

[gmc_rfc_06]

Declining testing, especially when the other side have offered to pay for it, is pretty disgraceful IMO.

Regardless of who the fighter is, dodging tests - that you claim to support - puts you directly in the firing line. It's a very easy thing to do, unless there is something to hide.

[Bullrider]

Ward is no different from Haymon fighters, which includes Floyd. They all refuse VADA testing. Malignaggi was denied VADA testing and threatened with fight cancellation. Floyd's next opponent should demand VADA testing for fairness sake. They all look like they're hiding something.

[Alx.]

You mad marquez is on the juice and still lost to bradley?

[Souwester]

Ward is no different from Haymon fighters, which includes Floyd. They all refuse VADA testing. Malignaggi was denied VADA testing and threatened with fight cancellation. Floyd's next opponent should demand VADA testing for fairness sake. They all look like they're hiding something.

Great points, I didn't know that about Malignaggi. He always comes off as fake when he's doing Showtime commentary.

[Frank Ducketts]

Boxing's PEDs issue impossible to ignore

By Eric Raskin | October 24, 2012 12:32:49 PM PDT

What's more tainted: the beef they serve at Erik Morales' training camp, or the sport that made Morales famous?

Whether or not you buy Morales' excuses, whether or not clenbuterol fits your definition of "performance enhancing," whether or not you believe someone should have pulled the plug on the main event of last Saturday's Showtime-televised card at Barclays Center in Brooklyn -- these are all small-picture questions.

The larger-picture view is that boxing, like almost every other sport these days, has a very real PEDs problem. You can take each individual case and find some sort of justification to sweep it under the rug. But at a certain point, the collective evidence becomes too troubling to ignore. If boxing hadn't already reached that point before Morales' "B sample" grabbing headlines, it certainly has now.

For most of the past decade, it was one name here, another name there, some testing positive, some implicated without ever testing positive. Fernando Vargas. Shane Mosley. Orlando Salido. Evander Holyfield. James Toney. Roy Jones Jr. and Richard Hall, both, after fighting each other. There would be a noteworthy incident every year or two, but it never threatened to change the way we viewed the sport.

Six months ago, if you had told me 75 percent of the boxers in the world were juicing, I'd have called you a nut-job conspiracy theorist.

Now, I can't help wondering whether 75 percent is too conservative an estimate.

Between May and October, Lamont Peterson, Andre Berto, Antonio Tarver and Morales -- all current or former major belt holders -- failed drug tests. (And if you really want to get your pink underwear in a bunch, you can lump Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. into that group as well, for spending more time with lowercase roach than uppercase Roach in training camp.)

There's no logical reason to believe that more boxers are using banned substances now than there were in the past. If anything, you'd think fewer would be using, on account of increased testing and their peers getting caught. So whatever PEDs problem boxing has now is probably a problem it has had for decades.

It's just that in 2012, for the first time, those of us who would like to pretend this problem doesn't exist have no choice but to acknowledge that it does. For all we know, boxing is no cleaner than baseball was in the "magical" summer of McGwire and Sosa, no cleaner than cycling or track and field or pro wrestling.

Boxing is not clean. Therefore, by definition, it is dirty. And that makes everything messy. For many of us as fans, that's the worst part of all of this. It's not necessarily that we demand a drug-free sport. It's that we're selfish and we want a sport in which we can appreciate the athleticism, skill, power and heart displayed by our favorite warriors without having to think about the asterisk loaded into every glove.

There are some who believe the sport is headed in the right direction, that you have to bust fighters and cancel bouts to eventually get to a better place. There are others who view all of the needles and urine containers as a waste of time because they believe all PEDs should be legal.

I don't have all the answers. In fact, I don't have any of the answers. There are no solutions out there that will satisfy everyone. The only thing uniting all boxing fans is a desire to see quality fights, and at the moment, the reality of fighters turning up with drugs in their systems is at odds with that desire. Peterson-Amir Khan II and Berto-Victor Ortiz II -- two very attractive fights -- were canceled. And every fight that doesn't get canceled takes place underneath overcast skies.

For those of us who tried hard for many years to convince ourselves that boxing didn't have a PEDs problem, this has all become, for lack of a harder-edged word, uncomfortable.

And that's without even dipping a toe in the waters of how this might affect Hall of Fame voting in the years to come. Can you imagine an International Boxing Hall of Fame without Holyfield?

Go ahead and imagine it. We live in a world where a boxer tests positive and still fights on Showtime but another boxer tests positive and can't commentate on Showtime. We live in a world where phrases like "testosterone pellets," "B sample" and "contaminated meat" are all part of the vernacular. We live in a world where some things we once believed to be true we now believe to be highly uncertain.

It was so much simpler to be a boxing fan when we could all just look the other way. But the events of 2012 have made that impossible. Especially when we all suspect that the only thing that makes 2012 different from every year that came before it is that more boxers are getting caught.


Tags:BoxingEric RaskinJulio Cesar Chavez Jr.Lamont PetersonErik MoralesAntonio TarverAndre BertoPEDs

[marvelousmatt]

I don't think Ward is a cheat but VADA testing should be mandatory for every and all boxing fights. Especially title fights. Too bad that can't happen, but it would really erase all doubt and controversy surrounding boxing, at least PED wise

VADA testing is not good.

No one wants to use it. Not defending Ward but WADA is the standard for testing world-wide.

VADA is associated with Victor Conte.

[Frank Ducketts]

VADA testing is not good.

No one wants to use it. Not defending Ward but WADA is the standard for testing world-wide.

VADA is associated with Victor Conte.

NSAC, WADA, USADA I would do.

VADA can kiss my ass.

When VADA is disassociated from Conte totally, and they might be as of today, don't know...but when they do disassociate from that dirty ass, con man...then I'd think about using VADA.

That clown thought that nobody used CIR testing, lmao.

[PACnPBFsuck]

VADA testing is not good.

No one wants to use it. Not defending Ward but WADA is the standard for testing world-wide.

VADA is associated with Victor Conte.

VADA and USADA are both ran under WADA rules and protocols. WADA doesn't test anyone, they're just a governing body.

[SplitSecond]

NSAC, WADA, USADA I would do.

VADA can kiss my ass.

When VADA is disassociated from Conte totally, and they might be as of today, don't know...but when they do disassociate from that dirty ass, con man...then I'd think about using VADA.

That clown thought that nobody used CIR testing, lmao.

vada is about as associated to conte as usada is to heredia

actually believe it to be more so

also conte is the one getting his fighters to be pro testing