Boxing: Canelo Alvarez's failed drugs test must not be swept under the carpet

What was certain to be boxing’s biggest fight of 2018 took a major blow this week with the shocking news that Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez had failed a drug test.

Alvarez tested positive for trace amounts of Clenbuterol, two months or so before his rematch with Gennady Golovkin in Las Vegas, and was training in his native Mexico when the positive test was discovered.

Canelo failed two tests – one on February 17th and one three days later on the 20th – though the exact meaning of the positive tests remains unclear.

Clenbuterol is often fed to animals intended for meat consumption in China and Mexico, because it helps produce leaner meat. Dr. Daniel Eichner, the president and lab director of the Sports Medicine Research & Testing Laboratory (SMRTL) that conducted the test of Alvarez, stated, “These values are all within the range of what is expected from meat contamination.”

Golden Boy Promotions, who manage Alvarez, stated the positive test is “consistent with meat contamination that has impacted dozens of athletes in Mexico over the last years.”

And there have indeed been examples of such meat contamination producing ‘red herrings’ when it comes to doping tests.

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Notably, members of the Mexican football team playing in the 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup were cleared of anti-doping charges, after initially testing positive for Clenbuterol. It was found they had eaten contaminated meat, though it must be pointed out that they did not play in the tournament.

In 2016 another boxer, Francisco Vargas, tested positive for Clenbuterol before his fight with Orlando Salido, but the California State Athletic Commission licensed him provisionally, and he passed later tests.

It appears likely that further investigation will show that Alvarez did indeed consume contaminated meat. And yet, there’s something disturbing about how the money men in the sport were all too happy to immediately ignore the failed tests and continue to promote this big-money fight.

Canelo may indeed be innocent of serious actual doping, but surely he needs to prove that before we can just move on to the small matter of a massive payday in a Cinco de Mayo rematch versus GGG.

Not only that, but what kind of top-level professional athlete and top-level coaching team allow such a scenario where Saul is eating meat that has a well-known Clenbuterol presence and an extremely documented history of flagging up in drug testing procedures?

Fight sports are not the place for benefit of the doubt, no matter how many millions of dollars are invested. Doping is a serious issue in all of sports, but the stakes are so much higher when the sport involves physical combat.

It’s wrong to use substances to gain an unfair advantage no matter what the sport, but while you can play tennis or play football or run on a track or race on bicycles, you don’t ‘play’ boxing.

Here’s an example. If, and only if, it turns out that Canelo has indeed been using performance-enhancing chemicals in boxing, go back and watch his 2016 fight versus Britain’s own Amir Khan. Watch the devastating knockout finish. Replay it three to four times. Then, ask yourself if it’s humane to allow boxers to load up those blows with drugs.

Fight sports are, of course, extremely risky no matter what. They have their fair share of tragedy – such as the recent death of Scott Westgarth – albeit nowhere near as much as some would assume. If people turn a blind eye to doping because fights are too lucrative to postpone until it is absolutely certain that all participants are clean, perhaps the cynics’ perception of how ‘barbaric’ boxing, MMA and other such pursuits are will become a reality.

Just like many others, I want Canelo-Golovkin II to happen. I want it to take place on Cinco de Mayo, as originally scheduled, where the atmosphere will be incredible.

I just don’t want it more than I want a clean, fair sport for the sake of all involved.

Time will tell on Alvarez’s failed tests, but it feels as though far too many people in powerful positions are willing to just sweep it under the carpet to protect their investment.