By Sean Jones: Victor Conte of SNAC Nutrition says he wants to see Saul Canelo Alvarez prove where he purchased his clenbuterol contaminated meat in Mexico so that he can prove that he didn’t intentionally use the banned drug to gain an edge over his opponent Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin for their rematch on May 5.
Unlike what some boxing fans are saying, Conte states that clenbuterol is a very potent performance enhancing substance that helps fighter gain an edge over their opponents. Conte says he’s not sure whether the 27-year-old Canelo (49-1-2, 34 KOs) accidentally tested positive for clenbuterol by consuming contaminated meat or if he intentionally used the drug to cheat and try and get an advantage over his opponent.
Conte says Canelo needs to explain to the Nevada State Athlete Commission when and where he or his team purchased his meat so that his contaminated meat story can be verified. Conte says it’s up to Canelo to prove that he did eat contaminated meat.
“Clenbuterol is a very potent performance enhancing substance that would help a boxer tremendously,” Victor Conte said to Villianfy. “I do believe a lot of fighters do use clenbuterol. The issue is it’s easy to get exposure from eating contaminated meat, and especially in Mexico. There’ been a long history of soccer players and other fighters, even a fighter I worked with back in 2016. Francisco Vargas, he was training here in the United States. He went back to Mexico, ate some contaminated meat, came up positive and they did the exact same thing that they’re attempting to do with Canelo, where is they make him bring his camp back to the United States and accelerate the testing until the fight,” Conte said.
If Canelo can prove precisely where he bought the contaminated meat, then he can give that information to the Nevada Commission, who is in charge of investigating his drug case, and they can go to Mexico and purchase the meat, and have it tested. If the meat is clean of clenbuterol, then the Commission will need to decide whether to suspend Canelo based on his story not being verifiable. Hopefully, Canelo doesn’t use a shotgun approach to where he thinks he consumed contaminated meat. If Canelo names off dozen restaurants and grocery stores in Mexico, he could have the Commission running all around the country buying meat. With that kind of excuse, then it’ll increase Canelo’s chances of being exonerated by the Commission, because they’ll likely find some contaminated meat at one of those places. Conte didn’t say anything about where a follicle test would prove that Canelo has been using clenbuterol for an extended period of time.
”I think there’s a responsibility that Canelo has,” Conte said. ”He needs to step up and provide some type of evidence where the receipts are where he purchased the contaminated meat. Did he go to a restaurant? Does he have a chef that bought this meat? Go back to that slaughterhouse where the meat came from. That’s exactly how the soccer players got exonerated. When you do an investigation, you go right to the restaurant. Where did you buy your meat? You go right to the slaughterhouse,” Conte said.
It makes sense for the Commission to question Canelo about the places for where he or his trainers purchased the contaminated meat in Mexico. It won’t be much of an investigation if the Commission merely takes Canelo’s word about where he got the meat without them going to that location and purchasing the meat themselves. If the Commission does purchase meat from all the places that Canelo acquired the meat the he consumed, then they need to be prepared to make a big decision if they fail to find that it’s tainted with clenbuterol. If the meats tests negative, does the Commission let Canelo off or do they suspend him because his story not being verifiable?
“They did a survey of slaughterhouses in Mexico,” Conte said. “58 of them were selling meat that was contaminated. That’s almost 30 percent. That tells you that one out of three is going to give you a positive test. I think he’s got some explaining to do. The reason the five soccer players were exonerated was because they conducted an investigation and there was evidence that was presented, and they went to the restaurant, and they went to the slaughterhouse. They detected where the contaminated meat was coming from. Canelo deserves every reasonable opportunity to present his side of the story, which means do an investigation that comes up and shows that you really did consume contaminated meat. If he says, ‘I can’t do that, or I don’t know that,’ here’s my opinion about it: He’s a multi-million-dollar athlete. They know about contaminated meat in Mexico at least since 2011. So why are your advisers not telling you, ‘don’t consume this meat in Mexico because oftentimes it’s contaminated.’ So, who’s in charge of letting him eat this meat, that’s what I want to know. What’s his name? Let’s talk to him,” Conte said.
It’s good thing for Canelo that Conte isn’t one of the members of the investigating team with the Nevada Commission, because it sounds like he would put his feet to the fire to make him explain where he got the contaminated meat. Ideally, the Commission should be asking Canelo these questions, because if they’re given generalities, then they won’t be able to verify his story. If they can’t do that, then there’s only one logical conclusion they can come to and that’s Canelo having cheated. He’s got to be able to prove where he purchased the meat.
”I lay the blame on everybody connected with him that had any part with the decision to eat, if he did eat contaminated meat, and it’s not intentional,” Conte said. ”That’s what I don’t know. Here’s where the real focus needs to be and how boxing can learn a valuable lesson from this contaminated meat issue or the intent to cheat. We don’t know yet regarding Canelo. From the last fight in September, they’re now just four months later going into a testing pool for 8 weeks before this next fight. What have they been doing for the last four months? Zero testing is what they’ve been doing. So when you give the fighter the ability as the A-side to turn the testing spigot on or off, you know exactly when the testing is going to begin out from a fight that gives you a window so big that you can drive a Mack truck through it. You can do all kinds of stuff. So is it possible that he was doing cycles of clenbuterol that he just didn’t taper. He got greedy that he didn’t just taper quite soon enough. We don’t know,” Conte said.
Conte is right about Canelo potentially having a lot of time to use PEDs before the testing by VADA started 8 weeks before the Golovkin fight. With Canelo having been out of the ring since September of last year, it gave him 4 months of ZERO testing by VADA. As such, if Canelo wanted to use PEDs during that four-month period, there would be no testing during that time frame. The testing by VADA only started 8 weeks before the fight with Golovkin. Canelo was caught right away as soon as he started his training camp. Conte thinks that could possibly be from contaminated meat that he consumed or a case of Canelo getting “greedy” failing to stop using the clenbuterol in time to have it cleared completely from his body by the time VADA began to test. Conte doesn’t understand how Canelo’s trainers weren’t watching what he ate so they could make sure he didn’t eat the tainted meat in Mexico. He thinks that’s irresponsible of them.
”It could be from contaminated meat,” Conte said. ”It could be. But it could also be from intentionally using clenbuterol to get a competitive edge. I don’t know which way this goes. Who are these trainers for Canelo? Hey, wake up; you put your boy at risk. Now you’ve got the whole world of boxing wondering is your boy intentionally cheating or did he really eat contaminated meat,” Conte said.
If the contaminated meat story is true, then Canelo’s trainers dropped the ball by not making sure that he had untainted meat for him to eat. They should have been purchasing his meat from nearby from the U.S. With Canelo’s millions, he should have easily been able to have meat imported from the U.S. It would be an easy thing for someone as wealthy as Canelo to have his meat shipped to him from the States. Canelo isn’t the type that would fire his trainers, so they’re probably not going to lose their jobs over this. But we don’t know if Canelo’s contaminated meat story is true. If it’s just an excuse to get him off from having used clenbuterol to gain an edge over Golovkin for their May 5th rematch, then you can’t put the blame on his trainers. That was Canelo’s fault. We still don’t know. The Commission must finish their investigation to find out whether Canelo’s story about him consuming contaminated meat is true.
”It’s an opportunity for boxing to learn that the people at the top of the sport making the majority of the money, the Canelos, the Triple Gs, the Joshuas, the others that are making massive money, they’re manipulating, they’re duping the boxing public into thinking, ‘hey, there’s testing, so these guys must be clean,’” Conte said. ”No, there’s a very short window of testing before fights and in between these guys can do whatever they want. So, I’d like to see one of these guys, Canelo, here’s your opportunity, step up and say, ‘I’m going to be the leader of boxing. I’m going to enroll in 24/7, 365-day tests, and I invite all others that have financial means to join me.’ It’s approximately $20,000 a year, but when you’re making tens of millions, I don’t think that’s a lot to ask,” Conte said.
It would be nice if Canelo agreed to drug testing 365 days a year rather than judge 8 weeks before each of his two fights per year. Canelo is being tested for drugs 4 months out of every 12 month-cycle. It would look great if Canelo stepped up and agreed to pay for the extra drug testing to show the boxing public that he’s a clean fighter during the entire 12 months of every year. I think a move like that would be good one for Canelo right now, because he and his promoters at Golden Boy could tell the boxing public that he’s subject to being tested during the entire year instead of just 8 weeks before each fight.
The average boxing fan isn’t aware that some fighters can bend the rules by using PEDs before their 8-week training camp begins and not show up positive. For a lot of boxing fans, they seem to think that drug cheats only use the PEDs during the training camp before the fight. They don’t realize that the time that many of the boxers do use the PEDS is before the training camp stars 16 weeks out, and they then stop the drugs before their camps start 8 weeks before the fight.
”My opinion, the fight [Canelo vs. Golovkin 2] will take place,” Conte said. ”They’ll do exactly what they did with Francisco Vargas. They’ll accelerate the testing, they’ll move his camp here, and he won’t test positive again, and they’ll have the fight. There’s too much money at stake. I don’t predict that they’re going to cancel the fight,” Conte said.
Conte is probably right about the Canelo-Golovkin 2 rematch still going ahead for May 5th. It’s unlikely that the fight will be canceled over Canelo’s positive drug test. You can argue that if Canelo wasn’t famous, then maybe he would be banned for his positive test for clenbuterol. One would hope that the boxing Commissions come up with a new rule change after this that they can apply to every boxer that gets popped for clenbuterol. Disallowing the contaminated meat excuse would likely help eliminate a lot of positive tests, because it would likely result in fighters avoiding eating meat during training camp, and it would also likely stop the drug cheats from using the substance. Of course, there’s nothing that can be done if the boxer uses clenbuterol before he starts his 8-week training camp. It’s too bad the drug testing agencies like VADA don’t test 16 weeks out rather than just 8 weeks, because might snare a lot of guilty fighters that way.
”Now I tell you who has the opportunity to step up and force Canelo to present some evidence to support the contaminated meat theory that he has and that’s Golovkin,” Conte said. ”Can you show me traceability to the slaughterhouses that is providing contaminated meat that ended up on Canelo’s plate? Somebody needs to take some risks. Whether they will or whether they won’t, I don’t know. People now realize how widespread PEDs in boxing is,” Conte said.
Golovkin hasn’t been very pushy in calling for Canelo to prove where he consumed the contaminated meat. It’s in Golovkin’s best interest to demand where Canelo bought the meat, because he’s the one that will be facing him on May 5th.
