Originally Posted by canklecat

Yup. For years I've noticed some boxers -- a sport I've followed for decades -- suddenly develop some type of inflammation that required an injection of Prednisone just before a major fight. When timed just right you get a significant turbo boost.

Almost every major ticket selling boxer of the past decade has been doped to the gills. There's no way these guys who begin their careers at flyweight or bantamweight as young adults magically reach welterweight or light middleweight later while still being lean and muscular. In the entire history of boxing there was never a comparable example of this kind of weight gain of lean muscle before the era of steroids, HGH, EPO, and blood doping. Among the first was probably Michael Spinks when he went up from light heavyweight to heavyweight to face Larry Holmes, while still being lean and muscular. But in the 1980s no meaningful testing was being done, or even available. Evander Holyfield was notorious for doping to gain from light heavy as an amateur to cruiserweight as a young pro, to a very muscular and lean heavyweight. He was so bad at covering up for it he used a thinly veiled fake name to ship the stuff to his own home address. Everyone was doing it. The guys who were "caught" and busted were just the guys who weren't big ticket sellers, or a PITA to promoters and didn't have enough friends and clout to get away with it -- such as James Toney, a great old school boxer, but a notoriously arrogant loudmouth, gym bully and PITA.

The rest -- like Mayweather, Pacquiao, Manuel Marquez... basically any of Mayweather's opponents -- get away with it because there's too much money to be made and spread around to the promoters, venue hosts, networks, judges, doctors, boxing officials, boxers themselves and their crews and entourages. The unwritten policy is that as long as everyone is doing it, it can't be cheating.

Interesting, though, when Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao finally met in the ring, Pacman suddenly developed inflammation and requested permission for an anti-inflammatory injection, which was denied. It seemed odd because he was almost certain doping throughout training, then tapering and cleaning up just before the gratuitous show of PED testing before the fight. My guess is that Pacquiao knew Mayweather was doping equally and wanted an additional edge just before the bout.

The downside is it suppresses the natural cortisol response, so there's often a physical and mental letdown or crash later. The usual oral tapered dosage pack is intended to minimize that effect. In previous years when I've needed Prednisone for upper respiratory inflammation, bronchitis or pneumonia, I had no problems with the taper. But I crashed hard in October and November 2021 after taking the tapered dosages as prescribed. But the effect the first two or three days was great -- strongest and fastest I've felt in years. But it doesn't last.

At times during his career, Evander Holyfield would seemingly inexplicably fade during a fight, gas out and be on the verge of being knocked out, or getting knocked out. Holyfield was known to be a gym rat, an extremely hard worker. So it wasn't lack of conditioning. I suspect it was a combination of overtraining, and poorly timed intake of steroids. If the timing isn't just right the user crashes. The pro cycling peloton mastered this game by the late 1990s, but there were some notorious examples of guys who rode stages way beyond their established abilities, suddenly fading in other stages, because their PED usage wasn't optimal. There's an entire YouTube channel devoted to this stuff, and it's often hilarious, delivered with snarky overtones, but very persuasive.