sport news Anthony Joshua calls for drugs cheats to be handed life-time bans

View
comments

Anthony Joshua has given thanks for the drugs testing regime which sometimes drives him crazy but has saved him from being thrown into the ring with the steroid fuelled Jarrell Miller.

'Imagine if I'd fought that Big Baby,' says AJ of the hyper-ventilating and inaptly nick-named American heavyweight who is starting a suspension instead of challenging him for his world titles in New York on June 1.

'After that, with all the proper bad stuff he was on, I might never have been the same fighter or person again.' The banning of Miller after positive tests for a potentially lethal cocktail of three banned substances has wrought havoc with Joshua's preparations for his US debut and only now produced a replacement opponent in the unheralded, unlikely and un-athletic looking figure of Andy Ruiz Jnr.

Yet Joshua says: 'While It's a shame about the circumstances of this fight, it's for the best.' He shares the widespread dismay that Miller has been outlawed for merely six months, a punishment so lenient as to be almost as criminal as the offences themselves, and says: 'It seems as if it will take something as terrible as a fighter being killed in the ring for the authorities over there to take drugs seriously.' 

Joshua considers the extent of Miller's abuse to be so grave that it merited 'a lifetime ban.' He also advocates 'a scale of offences according to what stuff fighters are using, with set punishments up to the maximum.' 

He adds: 'That would make boxers think twice about the risk of getting caught. At the moment there is little or no fear because they know they can be back in the ring within months.' 

In America testing is virtually restricted to training camp and fight night. Unlike in Britain, where the Boxing Board of Control calls for round-year random urine and blood sampling by UKAD.

Joshua says: 'It can be a nuisance, the testers knocking on the door at six or seven in the morning and delaying training runs and all that. But

read more from dailymail.....