BoxRec

Looks like Toney has f*cked up, he's failed his drug test.
and it looks like anabolic steroids, so he could be facing getting stripped .

Worst of all is that Ruiz will probaly get a match for the WBA title against the next availiable contender, seeing as he was beaten by a drug cheat.

Even worse, Ruiz could be reinstated as champion

Tough shit James...thats what i say...you know the rules kid...


What a chebb

If its nandrolone many athletes in other sports have been cleared of this.
As it can be produced naturally.
No 3 in March rankings was Valuev

It was mentioned in the current scene, and I think there could be an ounce of truth in the fact that Ruiz made such a sudden u-turn on his reitrement (even sooner than we thought) after he was told Toney may be testing positive. Conspiracy theory there for you anyway. Hope Toney is cleared, for all the obvious reasons. Altho should he be banned/stripped, I tip Ruiz to be fighting for the vacant WBA title in Toney's place on July's Byrd card at Madison Sq. :(

jomothepure wrote:It was mentioned in the current scene, and I think there could be an ounce of truth in the fact that Ruiz made such a sudden u-turn on his reitrement (even sooner than we thought) after he was told Toney may be testing positive. Conspiracy theory there for you anyway. Hope Toney is cleared, for all the obvious reasons. Altho should he be banned/stripped, I tip Ruiz to be fighting for the vacant WBA title in Toney's place on July's Byrd card at Madison Sq. :(

Oh lord..... Ruiz is not finished..... someone put him in with Vitali and get him finished......

Ruiz is a good old fashioned throwback....to the 1980s....

Roy Jones got away with allegedly taking drugs, so why not Toney?

I dont think the title will become vacant if Toney used doping, it will be given back to Ruiz.
EDIT: According to the WBA rules (and all ABC rules because of the Ali act?) a fighter that is caurght using doping will be disqualified, so Ruiz will keep the belt (and will be announced as winner of the fight?)

Freiheit wrote:I dont think the title will become vacant if Toney used doping, it will be given back to Ruiz.

Don't give us the good news all at once

Syntax Error wrote:Roy Jones got away with allegedly taking drugs, so why not Toney?

Yeah true, i think both he and Richard Hall tested positive for steroids.

Will be interesting to know what the WBA rules are on positive tests, you can see this one running for a while.

In athletics both the A and B sample have to test positive, so at this time maybe Toneys failed on his A sample.

If it is Nandralone it can be produced naturally, and was also found in some of the suppliments used by athletes, Linford Christie said this was the reason behind his failed test.
From what i've read they are saying Toneys personal Doctor may have pescribed him a drug of somesort that had Nandrolone in it. I always find this excuse a bit hard to take, all of a sudden this professional Doctor who is paid by the athlete notices that there is a banned substance in something he has pescribed, isn't the point of having this Doctor to notice things like this before administrating any substances to the athlete.

I think a lot will depend on the levels in his bloodstream. Excessive amounts of Nandrolone, or rather the waste product from nandrolone which is detectable, by other harmless substances. Abnormally high levels of nandrolone are also produced by consumption of large quantities of red meat (hello, this is Toney we're talking about), so it's not that cut and dried.

In some cases, the levels of Nandrolone aren't high enough to conclusively prove that there is proof positive, but in cases where the levels are 50-100 times the normal levels (I think that was the case with Dwain Chambers) then it's pretty clear they've been up to no good.

The thing is, I know of quite a few instances where fighters failed tests, but weren't stripped or banned. Vargas wasn't banned, Jones wasn't, I cannot think of an instance, apart from Botha was it, where someone was stripped.

I'm not even sure on the ABC rules governing the whole thing, it all seems to be grey area.

topper123 wrote:

Syntax Error wrote:Roy Jones got away with allegedly taking drugs, so why not Toney?

Yeah true, i think both he and Richard Hall tested positive for steroids.

Will be interesting to know what the WBA rules are on positive tests, you can see this one running for a while.

In athletics both the A and B sample have to test positive, so at this time maybe Toneys failed on his A sample.

If it is Nandralone it can be produced naturally, and was also found in some of the suppliments used by athletes, Linford Christie said this was the reason behind his failed test.
From what i've read they are saying Toneys personal Doctor may have pescribed him a drug of somesort that had Nandrolone in it. I always find this excuse a bit hard to take, all of a sudden this professional Doctor who is paid by the athlete notices that there is a banned substance in something he has pescribed, isn't the point of having this Doctor to notice things like this before administrating any substances to the athlete.

Linford Christie was on drugs for years. It is known in the business.
Drug tests are at their most stringent in Athletics and still thousands of users pass every year - there are many, many ways of fooling a test.

Boxing has probably the least stringent testing in the world as well. I mean Golota and Holyfield should not be able to pass any test, yet they have never shown positive.


Tommy Morrison admitted extreme usage, and he never failed.

E wrote: Linford Christie was on drugs for years. It is known in the business.
Drug tests are at their most stringent in Athletics and still thousands of users pass every year - there are many, many ways of fooling a test.

Boxing has probably the least stringent testing in the world as well. I mean Golota and Holyfield should not be able to pass any test, yet they have never shown positive.


Tommy Morrison admitted extreme usage, and he never failed.

E , you know alot about who was abusing drugs, i never heard of Holyfield being brought into question before, I know Morrison admited it.

Tommy Morrison always stopped taking steroids in the run in to the fight so they were no longer in the system he used it in training when he was some time away from the fight. He said so in a recent interview.

And as for Christie, lots of people have their suspicions, but on whose say-so are you saying that.

I also suspect that Holyfield was juicing, but again no proof....

From what I have read on the Roy Jones drugs issue it looks clearly like a tampared with sample.

Both he and Hall failed sample A (by considerable margins) but BOTH passed the B sample.

Now, A and B sample are taken at the same time - so it is not a case of the drugs going out of the system.

Also, from what I have read the first medical place was either not approved by one of the boxing governing bodies or by the state commision (cannot remember) so they tested sample B in another centre and both passed.

jamesmcdonnell wrote:Tommy Morrison always stopped taking steroids in the run in to the fight so they were no longer in the system he used it in training when he was some time away from the fight. He said so in a recent interview.

And as for Christie, lots of people have their suspicions, but on whose say-so are you saying that.

I also suspect that Holyfield was juicing, but again no proof....

James, Linford failed a drugs test in his retirment season.

He also failed a drugs test in Seoul in 1988, he said it was Ginseng that he used to cure a cold or something.

I remember the thing with the Ginseng, he was cleared in the end, wasn't it pseudoephadrine or something, which is found in lots of off the shelf products. In the end he was off the hook, and it wasn't a steroid he was accused of taking.

There was that scottish downhill skier too, who used a vick's sinus tube, but didn't know that in the USA, those products contain illegal stimulants to open up the airways, unlike the UK, where over the shelf products have far more restricted lists of acceptable chemical compounds.

A lot of the substances banned by the IAAF are ridiculous, so many of them are found in a multitude of products and are in no way performance enhancing in the quantities in which they are often found.

Dwayne chambers was a different case entirely. The levels of nandrolone in his body were huge, and could not have been natural. Plus he suddenly became fornicating huge in about 6 months, even Michael Johnson commented on how 'bulky' he had become one night when commentating.

Funny thing was, Chambers got slower, not faster...

jamesmcdonnell wrote: A lot of the substances banned by the IAAF are ridiculous, so many of them are found in a multitude of products and are in no way performance enhancing in the quantities in which they are often found.

Remember 'drug-cheats' are often found to have traces of 'drugs' (illegal supplements, steroids etc...) in their blood and not excessive amounts.

If every Tom, Dick and Harry claimed that the small levels of 'drug' found in their blood was attributable to legal products, which could concievably leave small traces of 'drug' in their blood then basically you would never know which athlete was legitimate and which one wasnt.

If you ban every legal product that has the remote chance of being used by a athlete as an excuse to justify a failed drug-test, then when someone actually fails a test, their defence becomes somewhat limited. Its Logic really...

jamesmcdonnell wrote:I remember the thing with the Ginseng, he was cleared in the end, wasn't it pseudoephadrine or something, which is found in lots of off the shelf products. In the end he was off the hook, and it wasn't a steroid he was accused of taking.

There was that scottish downhill skier too, who used a vick's sinus tube, but didn't know that in the USA, those products contain illegal stimulants to open up the airways, unlike the UK, where over the shelf products have far more restricted lists of acceptable chemical compounds.

A lot of the substances banned by the IAAF are ridiculous, so many of them are found in a multitude of products and are in no way performance enhancing in the quantities in which they are often found.

Dwayne chambers was a different case entirely. The levels of nandrolone in his body were huge, and could not have been natural. Plus he suddenly became fornicating huge in about 6 months, even Michael Johnson commented on how 'bulky' he had become one night when commentating.

Funny thing was, Chambers got slower, not faster...

Of course with Chambers, he has never denied the accusations and now athletes have come out saying they were always suspicious - athletes can be quite vicious like that, they were quite happy to have the cheat on their team for relay events but when he got caught they were the first to say "yeah, thought he was".

Christie also failed a drugs test when he was just running in sort of like competitive exhibitions (nadrolone). His levels was astronomically high, so high that he tried to take it to court for "harm of his reputation" and lost his claim because the levels were that high. One gets the feeling that Christie didn't expect he would get tested and didn't cover it up as he would have done perhaps a few years ago. Of course, all of his records and medals are in tacked cause there was no proof that he was on it during his prime years. However, those you labell Jones a drug cheat should feel just in doing the same to Christie - he twice failed a drugs test, the second time was especially high.

Ben Johnson lost his World record and 1987 World championship medal because he admitted after the Olympics that he was on the steriods in 1987.

Johnson set the world record at the 88 Olympics though....

jamesmcdonnell wrote:Johnson set the world record at the 88 Olympics though....

Breaking his own world record in 1987 set in the Rome World championships. Both times got eliminated.

That record went by the by and Carl Lewis' time of 9.92 set in the Olympic final in 1988 became the world record. Like with 1988 the positions got jostled up, so infact Christie had a belated World bronze from 1987.

Stu, once again I find myself clashing with your good self.

The drugs test he failed latterly, re nandrolone - he was running in a pseudo exhibition event in some fornicating backwater and perhaps didn't expect to be tested.

Another version is at that time, nandrolone was ubiquitous in large amounts in loads of supplements - the type that Christie used to use quite often.

You imply that early in his career he would have taken drugs and simply done a better job of covering it up. The bloke was the most tested athlete EVER in British athletics when he was at his peak - the testers wouldn't leave him alone and he didn't test positive for all that time.

I hate all this bullshit denigrating his achievements. Leave it out.

A lot of people made a lot of the fact that Christie got bettter after the age of 30, as evidence of his taking artificial boosters. In fact, it's more likely that this was due to him only really knuckling down on his training in his late 20's.

As Christie himself said, why on earth when I'm retired from international athletics would I take performance boosting drugs?

I think it is very dangerous territory to insinuate that such and such an athelete tested

As I said earlier, MANY of the substances on the banned list are not performance enhancing in any way. Many of them are in fact markers which show that a substance may have been taken to block another substance, or are markers which show up after taking another banned substance, but can also be found for other reasons. Many of the substances are naturally occuring also.

In fact, the same was the case with Chambers, he was found with THG in his system, which at that time was not even on the banned list, but was suspected of being related to a substance which was banned.

What you can be sure of, is that EVERY athlete is taking whatever substances they can which ARENT in the banned list. It's common knowledge that there are a lot of supplements tainted with banned items, and as the goalposts constantly shift, a lot of people are going to get caught. I think that these days it's all a very grey area, and exactly what constitutes 'cheating' as opposed to 'accidents' is very hard to define.

Greg Rusedski was found with Nandrolone in his system and got off, because they could not prove that it was present because of doping. Anyone who wins an olympic medal is going to be tested to fornicate, and I doubt Linford was any different. As Ian said, he took all kinds of supplements, because all athletes do these days, because they are all looking for an edge.

As far as many of these substances are concerned, there isn't a great deal of evidence to suggest they even enhance performance. Chambers may have been a lot stronger after taking whatever he took, but his times went down, as did his international ranking. Vargas' career didn't exactly improve either.

I had the pleasure of meeting an individual who is heavily involved in the British athletics scene last week. He was in Dubai as he is the life-long friend of one of my close friends here. Needless to say I took the opportunity to ask a few questions about the level of drug use, as I share similar sentiments to those on here who suspect it goes on a lot.
He was reasonably discreet and professional, but made it clear in no uncertain terms that drug taking in athletics at national/world level is bordering on institutionalised it's so widespread now. It's so rampant that he genuinely believes the only viable solution these days is to legalise usage.

Re: Holyfield

There is no doubt in my mind that the man was juicing. The circumstantial evidence is huge. From the 'heart trouble' that stuck him in hospital after the second Moorer fight, through to the ever-expanding chin (which, granted, was something of a diving board even early in his career), to the training regime to bulk up to heavyweight being undertaken with the assistance of Lee Haney, one of the more steroid-associated bodybuilders. Look as far back as 1988, when he moved up. The guy put on 20 pounds of lean mass in 8 months while retaining fitness levels to box at world level.

Holyfield's got more skeletons in his closet than a boxed series of Desperate Housewives.