By Chris Williams: If you want the opportunity to face Floyd Mayweather Jr., and get a good payday that comes with it, you’ll most likely have to agree to the random Olympic style blood tests that he now requires for all his opponents before they step foot in the ring with him. You’ve heard of safe sex. Well, Mayweather wants his opponents to be completely natural and not enhanced by any performance enhancing drugs. In that respect, Mayweather sees himself as a forerunner in the sport and someone that will change boxing in the near future by having his kind of testing adopted by the athletic boxing commissions.

The blood tests would pick up both kinds of performance enhancing drugs – growth hormones and steroids. There is debate whether the current urine testing that is used by the athletic commissions detects growth hormone, which is why Mayweather has opted to use the Olympic style tests and is asking for his opponents to agree to having the test conducted randomly, so as catch them if they attempt to cycle for a quick three to four weeks in between the tests to try and gain size and power. In an article at Yahoo Sports, Mayweather says “You start seeing so many different fighters, over and over again, go into comas. Fighters are dying. From what I hear, enhancement drugs are making fighters punch harder, faster and stronger. All it’s doing is hurting the sport.”

Mayweather’s fight against World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao fell apart recently, when Pacquiao was reluctant to have blood tests taken inside 24 days of the fight. Mayweather wanted Pacquiao to at least take them up to 2 weeks before the fight, but Pacquiao’s team couldn’t agree to that. Pacquiao feels that having blood taken from his body causes him to be weak afterwards.

Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer had this to say about the drug testing:
It’s a big statement that takes it to the forefront. It is those kinds of events that can act as a trigger for change. And I hope it will be a trigger. Who knows? Maybe five years from now we’ll look back and say the trigger to all this was the Mayweather-Mosley fight.”

I think Mayweather is right to ask for his opponents to take the blood tests. I’ve seen fighters that looked huge and who had put on massive amounts of weight, all muscle, in a short period of time and looked completely unnatural like a body builder, yet they were able to pass the urine tests after the fights. I think with extra testing like the blood tests, it’s a good thing and not something to be avoided or seen as a negative for the sport.