It may have flown under the radar, but over the weekend, former heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs was suspended for 90 days by the New York State Athletic Commission after testing positive for a banned substance following his December 3rd victory over Marcus McGee. The bout, which Briggs won via first round knockout, was changed to a No Contest. "Shannon is on enough medication to kill a horse because of his asthma," commented Ivalyo Gotzev, Briggs' manager, in an interview with Dan Rafael of ESPN. "He's not a steroid user or a drug user. He's using medication. We're consulting with his physicians and seeing how we can make the proper adjustments so this doesn't happen again."
As it stands right now, representatives of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will meet tomorrow with retired federal judge Daniel Weinstein and, through mediation, will try and revive talks for their potential March 13 megafight. You can be sure that Team Mayweather will no doubt use this latest example as a reason to justify their request for random blood testing. Although Gotzev insists that Briggs is not using steroids, he did decline to identify the substance for which Briggs actually tested positive for. He did, however, also bring up a valid point that other over-the-counter drug products have been the culprit in other posititive test results in the past. That being said, the alarming issue is the fact that the results were not discovered until after the fight had already taken place. This begs the question: could Floyd Mayweather have a point about the need for more stringent drug testing prior to a fight taking place?
Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with Manny Pacquiao. I am 100% certain that his success inside the ring is attributed to the hard work and dedication that he puts into his training. What this is about, however, is the type of testing that's currently being done by athletic commissions around the world. Are current testing policies truly adequate enough to catch an abuser of performance-enhancing drugs prior to stepping inside of the ring? While I do NOT think it's time to start implementing new testing policies, particularly for the biggest fight in history, I do think it's time to have a more thorough discussion about the drug testing policies in the sport of boxing and what can be done to make them better. As evidenced by this latest news regarding Shannon Briggs, it's clear that, at the very least, there should be a better process to identify offenders BEFORE they get a chance to step in the ring and inflict damage upon their opponents.