Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles
I hate being hoodwinked. Call it pride if you will, however the phrase ‘once bitten, twice shy’ applies in triplicate with yours truly and has me bombarded with nagging doubts this morning when I should be basking in the glow of another great night of boxing.
In the duplicitous society in which we live today, it’s very hard to find true heroism. Corruption is prevalent all around us. It pervades politics, big business, government, even that last great bastion of truth- the church. Put man and money hand in hand it seems and there’s a good chance there’ll be skulduggery, it appears to be ingrained in our very nature.
Rarely does the man in the street get to see the whole picture which rankles and frustrates in equal measure and is why boxing has always appealed as a sport worth investing in. As the old familiar clichés inform us, once the bell rings it’s mano-a-mano, nowhere to hide, one man’s will tested against another with heroic feats abound. There’s an inherent honesty and simplicity to boxing.
On Saturday night two of my favourite fighters duelled for the WBA welterweight title (I know writers aren’t supposed to exhibit favouritism, which is fine as far as reporting goes but mark my words, every scribe has their preferred picks). Shane Mosley and Antonio Margarito embody everything I like about prize fighters; courage, skill, toughness and a willingness to fight anyone tied to an ability to remain humble in an arena which inflates egos like no other. There’s a certain integrity about the pair, stand up guys, no edge to them. A fight between them was always win-win for me, so why did the result make me feel like I’d lost?
Perhaps because one has admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs in a previous championship fight whilst the other now faces investigation from the California State Athletic Commission after an alleged foreign substance was found within his hand wraps prior to the commencement of battle.
Boxing it appears can still shatter illusions like no other sport.
The as yet unsubstantiated claims laid at Margarito’s door unfortunately lead to suspicion and conjecture. Interested spectators awaiting results of any investigation will most likely be former victims Miguel Cotto and Kermit Cintron.
What of the victor Mosley? Testifying under grand jury, Mosley revealed that prior to his rematch with Oscar De la Hoya in 2003, he had unknowingly taken performance enhancing substances EPO (an endurance enhancer), The Clear (an anabolic steroid) and The Cream (a masking agent) supplied to him by BALCO bigwig Victor Conte. Mosley swears he was an unwitting participant, a misunderstanding he claims; however the fact remains that after taking those substances he was able to edge Oscar in the event based primarily on his edge in power and stamina, coming on strong late in the fight to take a close points verdict. The result still stands in the record books despite the subsequent revelations.
The sport of athletics has been ravaged by drug use, its popularity plummeting due to the fact. High profile cheats such as Ben Johnson, the Canadian 100m runner who smashed the world record in ’88 and Marion Jones, who collected five Olympic gold medals in 2000, dragged the sport through the gutter, however were both suitably admonished. The pair had their records and medals stripped away by the powers that be, their reputations left in tatters, Jones in fact serving jail time for lying during the investigation.
The debate rages on in track and field as to whether a confirmed drugs cheat should be banned from the sport for life, one which track legend Michael Johnson has very definite views on. Johnson not only advocates a lifetime ban for cheats but also the threat of prison for those caught boosting their performance illegally with anabolic steroids and the like. Johnson recently handed back one of his five Olympic gold medals when 4 x 400m relay team mate Antonio Pettigrew admitted whilst under oath to sporadic drug use throughout his career. Pettigrew it should be noted never failed a doping test.
Should fighters who have been proven to have used illegal performance enhancing substances receive similar lifetime bans? Is it Shane’s popularity and good guy reputation which has allowed the whole unsavoury episode to have been largely swept under the carpet? What if Floyd Mayweather had made similar admissions to Mosley, would we dismiss his actions so readily?
Whilst I’m firing off questions, what if a fighter is confirmed as a different sort of cheat? Loading gloves with an illegal substance designed to increase the amount of punishment each punch inflicts is tantamount to illegal assault. In 1983 and in one of the murkiest tales from boxing’s annals, Panama Lewis removed padding from the gloves of his charge, journeyman Luis Resto. Later that evening, Resto bludgeoned his opponent ‘Irish’ Billy Collins Jr to defeat, permanently blurring his vision and ending his career before it had even got off the ground. A devastated Collins aged just 22 subsequently drove his car over a cliff. Lewis and Resto served two and a half years in prison on charges of assault, conspiracy and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (Resto’s fists).
Resto later admitted that Lewis had previously placed plaster underneath his hand wraps in order to increase his punching power and had in fact done so on the night of the Collins fight. Billy’s face bore this out, a badly battered, bruised and swollen mess.
People love a good conspiracy theory. Whenever there’s an occurrence which causes jaws to drop there’ll be those who refuse to believe that the explanation they see before them is on the level. Many will seize upon the allegations aimed at Margarito as reason enough to explain away his previous superhuman endeavours, whatever the findings, no smoke without fire they’ll claim. Others will look at the extraordinary performance of Mosley with a degree of scepticism and distrust based upon the De la Hoya rematch. I myself am forced to look on sadly as two of boxing’s heralded good guys and most committed exponents have their careers along with their greatest performances eyed with suspicion.
It’s why a win-win situation turned sour.
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