Former junior middleweight world champion Liam Smith is shaking his head over the controversial situation involving Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.
It was revealed on Monday that Canelo tested positive for traces of clenbuterol, ahead of his scheduled rematch with Gennady Golovkin on May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Smith faced Canelo in 2016 and suffered a knockout defeat in the main event of an HBO Pay-Per-View card from Texas. He's currently the mandatory challenger to Canelo's Golden Boy stablemate, Sadam Ali, and the two of them are expected to fight in May.
The big issue that Smith has, is the recent run of boxers to test positive for banned substances and suffer absolutely no consequences.
Smith believes all boxers, regardless of status, should be placed on a suspension until a proper investigation is carried out.
He does not expect Canelo to face any sort of penalty and believes the rematch with Golovkin will go forward as planned.
“I think it’s getting beyond a joke now and more needs to be done. You fail a drug test, if it’s legit, you should be banned and that’s that,” Smith told Boxing News.
“I think he’s failed a drug test. You’ve seen Francisco Vargas, who my brother [Stephen] fought last year, he failed a drug test for the same thing and he said it was meat, so with Canelo being from Mexico and supposedly a clever man, a superstar athlete in his own right, he shouldn’t put himself in that situation to eat that sort of meat. You know what you’re putting in your body. With him being Mexican himself and with him knowing about that meat situation before then I think he should know.”
"I know they’re saying they only found traces of it but clenbuterol, that’s a performance enhancing drug isn’t it? It should be scrutinised properly and it should be dealt with the way other fighters are dealt with. We’ve seen with Vargas last year, the fight still went ahead. I’m telling you now I believe the Golovkin fight will still go ahead.”
2023-10-20 14:36:29
