The furor over major league baseball’s suspension of Ryan – or is that Lyin’? – Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers in the never-ending and ever-widening PED scandal already includes a reported link to one boxer, Yuriorkis Gamboa. Would anybody be surprised if more fighters are mentioned?
Didn’t think so.
Fighters figure to be a footnote to an unfolding story about celebrity athletes whose ability to lie has to be among those things that get enhanced in the bums’ rush to run faster, fly higher, hit harder and get richer.
Enough already has been said about haphazard testing by state commissions. What’s more, there’s still no resolution to controversy about whether the procedure should be outsourced to vigilant agencies that know what to test for and how to test for it. Put it this way: If Lance Armstrong were a boxer, his reign as the pound-for-pound champion would have lasted longer than his Tour de France reign.
But testing technology and protocol don’t really matter. Major-league baseball, after all, is supposed to a have a rigorous, state-of-the-art procedure in place. But did it stop the PED plague? Within a couple of years after Braun tested positive and had a potential suspension overturned by a weekend delay in the specimen’s delivery to authorities, he was back, knocking at the door to Biogensis, a south Florida clinic that advertised anti-aging, yet was simply trying to recreate Balco.
Despite a litany of denials offered beneath a slick veneer that politicians would envy, Braun was cheating all over again, according to a Miami New Times story based on records kept by the Biogensis owner, Anthony Bosch. Braun couldn’t talk his way out of it this time this time. He knew he had been caught.
He accepted his 65-game suspension this week by hiding behind a prepared statement. He had to hide somewhere. It would have been hard to mask a smirk that had to have been there. Braun got away with another one. After all, the Brewers still owe the 2011 National League’s Most Valuable Player more than $100-million dollars on a contract signed two years ago.
Follow the money and the crooked bottom line tells you that PEDs are an investment. A young fighter doesn’t need directions to follow Braun’s path. There will be some accusations, fines and suspensions along the way. But a good fighter who hopes to become great enough to warrant a fraction of Braun’s contracted wealth won’t hesitate to reach for them. Braun is hardly a role model, but he is an example of how it pays to cheat.
It’s safe to assume that PEDs put Braun in a position to land a contract that will make him rich for the rest of his life. If you took a poll of young prize fighters in a dangerous game ruled by the risk-to-reward ratio, how many would say they’d do the same thing? The Biogensis story might tell us that most of them would. PEDs are just the method. But don’t blame the chemistry. Blame the culture.
AZ NOTES
Spotted at ringside: Jose Benavidez Jr. The prospect, unbeaten at junior-welterweight, took a break from his return to the gym on July 20 for a well-matched, entertaining card staged by Iron Boy Promotions at Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix.
Benavidez has been inactive since he was nearly knocked out in the final round of a victory by unanimous decision last October in Carson, Calif. He has since undergone a second surgery to his right hand. He had a pin placed in the small finger.
“It feels fine,’’ Benavidez said as he held up the problematic hand. “I’ve been working and it’s strong. I’ve been working for about three weeks now. I just really want to get back into the ring. How long has it been? Eight, nine months? Whatever it’s been, I just want to get back in there.’’
