sport news Boxing's shocking drugs problem laid bare: A money-first, broken system riddled ... trends now
Just like the big right hand that came before it, there is a question causing chaos in Chris van Heerden's mind. Round and round it goes, every day, salting an old wound with new suspicions.
It has been this way for the thick end of a fortnight now. Repeatedly, he finds himself drifting back to that night in April, at Manchester Arena, when this former champion fancied his chances against a hyped talent with a famous name.
He remembers it all. He can recall the comfort he felt in the first session and the subsequent sense on his stool that he would give it another three to settle the nerves before increasing the heat.
That is what experience looks like, the nous of a 35-year-old South African who had won 28 of 31 fights, had held a fringe world title at welterweight, and in bigger pictures had endured the murder of his father and beaten thoughts of suicide after a defeat in 2015.
That's his tale. A victim's story in terms of what we will discuss here? We will not call it that. But we do know what happened next on April 16, which is to say less than a minute into the second round, the son of a legend smacked Van Heerden into semi-consciousness with a head punch from hell. Hell and maybe some other places, because who truly knows all the details about Conor Benn at this stage?
It is why Van Heerden is on the phone with Sportsmail from his home in California. 'I can't get it out of my mind,' he says. 'One thing that has made me proud my whole career is I never got put down by a shot to the chin. Body shot, once, but not chin.
'Then this guy beats me in two rounds - no-one buzzed my head like that before. Everything that has come out, how can anyone blame me for questioning it?'
Conor Benn saw his fight with Chris Eubank Jr called off after he had failed a drugs test
Benn tested positive for banned substance clomifene in the build-up to the mega-fight
Benn's last fight saw secure a second-round TKO win over Chris van Heerden in April
He is getting animated, just as he has so often when thinking about the astonishing news revealed in these pages on October 5, which is that Benn failed a drugs test in September.
Benn has not fought since he beat Van Heerden and with his multi-million-pound bout against Chris Eubank Jr now postponed indefinitely, it is unclear when he will box again.
That is why Van Heerden's thoughts are locked in a loop of doubts. He knows Benn says he is clean, albeit without explanation, and there is no suggestion banned substances were in his system before that fight in Manchester. But through this remarkable saga, Van Heerden cannot help but wonder what it all means for him.
'When I lost that fight it took me two months to make peace with it,' he adds. 'The magnitude of the fight, the embarrassment of losing - it hurt me because I have dreams too. I had to tell myself I lost to the better man. But did I? I want him to have his say and to try to clear his name. But it is natural for me to ask if I lost to someone playing ugly. That is my question.
'And I want to know why this s*** keeps happening in boxing. It has to change.'
Based on an extensive Sportsmail investigation, taking in dozens of interviews from an unapologetic cheat to promoters to an idealist to those who are meant to protect them, and from there to the architect of an almighty scandal, it is hard to recall when truer words were spoken in this most dangerous of sports.
Van Heerden, who had won 28 of 31 fights, is now questioning if Benn had doped for their bout
Benn sent Van Heerden crashing down to the canvas with this ferocious shot at in Manchester
One of the few is talking about the day he decided to become one of the many. It is quite something - Larry Olubamiwo was 10 when he first knew he was going to use performance-enhancing drugs.
'I wanted to from the moment Ben Johnson got caught (after the 100m at the 1988 Olympics),' he tells Sportsmail. 'I'm into Marvel comics and I just wanted to look bigger, more muscular, super-human. When I found out Johnson was on anabolic steroids, everyone in my primary school slated him but not me. I knew then I would use those drugs.'
Those drugs and so many more. When the Londoner was busted in 2012 after his 13th professional fight, he was found to have used at least 13 substances, from steroids to EPO and human growth hormone.
What makes him one of the many is that he was a boxer who took drugs, even before his debut in 2008. What places Olubamiwo among the few is that he was caught and owned up, which led to him receiving an initial four-year ban, later reduced for co-operation.
He talks freely about it and as an unrepentant doper with a degree in pharmaceutical chemistry is better placed than most to discuss the gaping loopholes of a woefully inadequate testing structure, in this country and beyond.
Ex-British heavyweight Larry Olubamiwo was busted in 2012 after he was found to have used at least 13 substances
'The only reason I got caught is because I was sloppy,' he says. 'I was meticulous at first but when I realised I wasn't being tested I felt I could do what I liked.'
It is what he adds next that ought to shame those in pursuit: 'I won the Southern Area title and never got tested. Won an English title eliminator - never got tested. Fought a British title eliminator - never got tested. The day I got caught was the first time they tested me.'
It is a system so broken he reckons '80 to 90 per cent of pay-per-view fighters' are doping.
Victor Conte, the founder of the notorious BALCO lab in the US, which two decades ago was at the centre of one of the largest doping scandals in history, is similarly scathing. 'I think it is more like 50 or 60 per cent,' he told Sportsmail. 'I still believe it is the majority.'
When asked how easy it would be to get around boxing's doping controls, he gave a deadpan reply: 'Like taking candy from a baby.'
The storm around Conor Benn has thrown this subject back under a spotlight. The travesty is that it was ever allowed to leave.
Olubamiwo (pictured fighting in 2011) claims '80 to 90 per cent of pay-per-view fighters' are doping
The list of world champion boxers known to have failed a drugs test in the past 25 or so years is both alarming and informative, irrespective of whether they were sanctioned, exonerated, let off lightly, or even mitigated as the consequence of eating an uncastrated wild boar.
In no particular order, they include Canelo Alvarez, Tyson Fury, Roy Jones Jr, Vitali Klitschko, Shane Mosley, Erik Morales, Billy Joe Saunders, Alexander Povetkin, Andre Berto and Lucian Bute. If that is the tip, just how big is the iceberg?
When we cast our focus on to this country, a picture emerges of how easy it is to avoid detection. To go by the now-infamous words of Dr Usman Sajjad, who worked with Benn: 'You have to be an idiot to fail a drug test in England.'
Whatever else might be said about Dr Sajjad, multiple sources believe he hit that nail flush on the head.
A look at the UK Anti-Doping testing numbers is fascinating. Since the first quarter of their 2015 figures - as far back as their online records go - they have conducted 2,067 tests across the British Boxing Board of Control's 1,089 active professional
