EDDIE HEARN HAS confirmed that all of Katie Taylor’s future fights will be subject to random drug tests by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency (VADA), explaining that he doesn’t wish to see either Taylor’s ring legacy or commercial earnings crushed “at the hands of a drug cheat”.
Taylor’s victory over Christina Linardatou in Manchester on Saturday, which saw the Bray woman become a two-weight world champion, was the first-ever women’s professional boxing contest to fall under VADA’s full testing regime which is widely considered to be the gold standard in boxing and wider sport.
However, the cost of VADA testing dictates that only fights at the highest and most lucrative end of professional boxing tend to be subject to the same stringent anti-doping measures.
The collection of a single sample by any reputable anti-doping agency — be it VADA or otherwise — can cost anywhere between $600 and $1200, meaning it is simply not financially feasible for promoters or indeed fighters at the lower end of the sport.
The vast majority of professional boxers globally aren’t tested until they reach world-championship level, whereby testing may be mandatory — or simply ‘encouraged’ and left to the local boxing commission — depending on the sanctioning body by whom a fight is supervised.
The World Boxing Council (WBC) are perceived to be the leaders in anti-doping among the four major sanctioning bodies having introduced their VADA-affiliated Clean Boxing Program for men in 2016, and for women in 2019. Fighters in each division must enroll in the Clean Boxing Program within three months of being ranked in the WBC’s top 15 for men, or top five for women. Failure to do so will see them removed from those rankings.
But the WBC’s annual budget for the program dictates that only somewhere in the region of 5% of enrolled fighters are actually tested by VADA as part of the Clean Boxing Program, and the majority of those tests are urine samples in which it easier to mask foul play than those of the more expensive blood variety.
Full VADA testing typically consists of multiple tests — both blood and urine — in the lead-up to, and after, a fight.
But it is generally at the request only of a promoter and/or fighter — one or both of whom will foot the $20,000-30,000 bill — that VADA testing is carried out around a particular contest.
And when asked by The42, Hearn explained why the stipulation in both Taylor and Linardatou’s respective contracts before Saturday’s encounter would be non-negotiable for all of the Irish icon’s outings in 2020 and beyond.
“It’s so expensive that it’s impossible to do as consistently as we would like”, said the Matchroom Boxing chief, “but every major fight is tested.
But you can’t do it throughout the whole card — it costs between $20,000 to $30,000 dollars per fight. We have [had] 11 fights on Saturday’s card. It’s impossible.
“We are working on a similar kind of program to the WBC, where we have a random testing program for Matchroom fighters, but you may never, ever get tested.
“With this VADA testing we do for our main fights, you can’t cheat. It’s impossible to cheat because you’re going to get tested five or six times in camp. They can come on a Monday and test and come back on Tuesday — you just don’t know.
There are too many fighters cheating. And I don’t want to see Katie’s legacy tainted by someone who has beaten her on unfair terms. There is so much to fight for in terms of commercial value. If she loses — she is making a lot of money — if she loses, it will affect her commercial earnings and… It will crush her commercial earnings to be honest, and it could be at the hands of a drug cheat.
“For $25,00 or $30,00, in the grand scheme of Katie Taylor in terms of purses, that is when it’s not too expensive.
“But it is when it’s a British title fight or a European title fight — you might be paying more for VADA testing than one of the guy’s purses.”
Speaking to The42 last week, Taylor spoke of the importance of clean boxing, describing it as “criminal” that fighters would step into her domain imbued by performance-enhancing drugs.
.@KatieTaylor on boxing’s doping problem, and why her fight vs Christina Linardatou will be the first in women’s pro boxing history to have been subjected to a full @Vada_Testing programme. pic.twitter.com/KWJ25ex7tW
— Gavan Casey (@GavanCasey) October 30, 2019
“You don’t like getting those calls at six o’clock in the morning, but it’s definitely going to help the sport,” she said. “It has to be done.
“I was tested constantly as an amateur fighter so it’s nice to see the VADA testing coming into the professional ranks as well.
I just think there have been so many dirty drug tests over the last few years — so many dirty boxers, really, over the last few years. Boxing is supposed to be a noble sport. There’s something very noble about getting into the ring and going toe to toe with your opponent. But when there’s so many using performance-enhancing drugs, it’s very, very unfair.
“And also”, she added, “you see the amount of deaths that’s happened this year in the ring as well — it’s been a very, very tough year for boxing, I think.
It’s a tough sport as it is, and if you have drugs inside you, it’s absolutely criminal, really. It’s very important for every single boxer who steps into the ring to be clean.
