Dibella: Canelo ate tainted beef when he knows he’s not supposed to

By Boxing News - 04/20/2018 - Comments

Image: Dibella: Canelo ate tainted beef when he knows he’s not supposed to

By Dan Ambrose: Promoter Lou Dibella says Saul Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) ate tainted beef in Mexico when he knows he shouldn’t have. Canelo tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol last February. He said he ate tainted beef in Mexico.

Dibella doesn’t understand why the World Boxing Council didn’t make Canelo enroll in their Clean Boxing program when they made him the mandatory challenger for WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin for their now cancelled rematch.

Dibella says Canelo’s speedy body transformation in which his physique changed to a more muscular look after moving up from junior middleweight to middleweight. Dibella says that fighters don’t rapidly change their physique like that. He also don’t believe that Canelo tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol from eating tainted beef in Mexico like he said he did.

The contenders in the WBC’s top 15 rankings are supposed to be enrolled in the sanctioning organization’s Clean Boxing program in order for them to receive a top 15 ranking. But for some reason, the WBC still had Canelo ranked in their top 15 and had him as the mandatory despite him not being enrolled. It’s unclear why the WBC ranked Canelo without insisting that he enroll in their clean boxing program.

If Canelo was enrolled in the WBC’s clean boxing program, they would have likely been the ones that would have tested him before VADA did last February, and they would have been the ones that would have been reporting his positive test for the banned substance clenbuterol.

“The IBF has a set of rules and they abide their rules,” promoter Lou Dibella said to ES News Reporting. “A lot of the other organizations, they change their rules every five minutes. They [WBC] got this drug testing. Canelo was the [WBC] mandatory [for Golovkin]. The WBC ordered Canelo for the rematch with Golovkin. Meanwhile, Canelo has never been enrolled in the [WBC’s] Clean Boxing Program. Explain that. He was made a mandatory. They ordered the fight and he had never signed the paperwork for the Clean Boxing Program,” Dibella said.

Gennady Golovkin might lose his IBF middleweight title due to the IBF’s saying that he needs to fight his IBF mandatory challenger Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Golovkin has already signed to defend his IBF/WBA/WBC middleweight titles against inactive 154 lb. contender Vanes Martirosyan on May 5 at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

GGG’s promoter Tom Loeffler is still working to have the IBF make an exception to let Golovkin keep his IBF title. It’s likely that a step aside fee paid to Derevyanchenko is the only way Golovkin will be able to keep his IBF belt without the organization stripping him of his title.

”Guys don’t go from looking like one thing and then six months later, their head got bigger, their whole shoulders and body size is bigger,” Dibella said. ”You don’t magically become the hulk. It doesn’t work that way. You’re going to tell me now that the pictures of him now look like the pictures of him at 154. Devil’s advocate; you think a multi-millionaire in Mexico is eating tainted beef? In other sports, they don’t give a s—t. ‘Oh, I was in Mexico and I ate the beef.’ ‘Well, you shouldn’t have. Suspension.’ He shouldn’t have, and by the way, I doubt he did. That’s my own personal opinion. I doubt he did,” Dibella said.

Like a lot of people, Dibella is suspicious of Canelo’s body transformation before his fight with Golovkin, and he doesn’t think that he ate contaminated beef. In other words, Dibella appears to believe Canelo intentionally used cleanbuterol rather than having ingested it from contaminated beef.

Canelo was given a six month suspension this week at his hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission last Wednesday. There wasn’t a fine involved with the suspension or any word about additional drug testing to be done. Canelo’s suspension will end in mid-August, and he’ll be free to fight Golovkin in a rematch on September 15.

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