In a sport where lives are on the line, performance enhancing drugs are no joke and fighters who test positive for any such substance are rightly considered guilty until proven innocent given the danger they pose to their opponent whilst under the influence of P.E.D.’s.
With Ryan Garcia, as it was with Conor Benn, the assumption throughout the boxing community is that a positive test is simply a positive test and that both men should be both banned from boxing and branded as a cheater. However, in life it is important to at least listen to the opposing views, even if you find them hard to believe.
Ryan Garcia arguably pulled off both the upset and performance of the year when he dominated Devin Haney last month, dropping the previously undefeated WBC champion on three occasions on his way to a majority-decision win.
However, the asterisk on the win – because of Garcia’s missed weight, was multiplied ten-fold when he tested positive for Ostarine, causing outrage in the aftermath of his most glorious night in the ring.
At 25-years-old, Garcia has tremendous talent inside of the ring but his behaviour outside of it does not help his case. Since testing positive for Ostarine, Garcia has almost pretended as if nothing has happened and even recently took his unusual behaviour to another extreme in recent days – being videoed bizarrely rapping in his car with an orangutan.
Could this be a way to distract the masses from today’s news regarding the B-sample? Could it be a way to distract himself from the immense stress and spotlight that he is under? Who knows.
Regardless, it is not the behaviour of a man who feels guilty about one of boxing’s most heinous crimes – whether that be because he does not care or because he didn’t do it.
‘King Ry’ has often been seen laughing and joking in interviews since, calling out a plethora of fighters and even threatening to punch Eddie Hearn at the Fury-Usyk fight week. However, in a uniquely differing interview with Emily Austin on DAZN, Garcia took a more serious approach and highlighted his concerns with the news of his positive test for Ostarine.
“We are letting literal cheaters convict me of cheating. Like Victor Conte is a literal cheater, he literally got caught for steroids, why are we listening to this guy? He literally was the poster boy for steroids and giving them to athletes, and we are listening to that guy and he is the one that shaped VADA [Voluntary Anti-Doping Association] – that’s crazy.
“What is even crazier is that the New York State Athletic Commission’s President resigned right after this [incident] and even crazier is that they didn’t find any supplement or steroids in my system all the way up until a day before the fight and the day after my fight.
“So, I would have had to have taken steroids a week before my fight because it takes some time for the steroids results to come in and that wouldn’t even make sense because it wouldn’t even have helped me during the fight, in just a week.
“They found like a trillionth of a gram in my system, what would that do?”
Garcia makes the point in terms of how it would be pointless for him to take the risk for such a small amount of steroids and that it would likely prove ineffective given the small amount of time between those positive tests and fight night.
Yet, to have any prohibited substance in your system at all is an eyebrow-raiser that deserves attention for sure and Garcia does not seem surprised by that finding.
The recent B-sample results also returned a positive test, confirming that the initial adverse findings were correct, although to use that information to determine Ostarine-gate as an open and shut case would be to dismiss all non-scientific investigation.
Additionally, this evidence is not proof of whether Garcia knowingly digested the substance or if it entered his body unintentionally, but whether that is grounds to avoid a suspension will always remain as a subjective opinion.
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