Arum: Something’s fishy with Mayweather’s test
Top Rank boss Bob Arum (middle) says there was something suspicious about the testosterone levels in the blood of Floyd Mayweather Jr. (left). AP FILE
Though he regards Floyd Mayweather Jr. as a clean athlete for the longest time, Top Rank CEO Bob Arum raised questions with the recently retired boxing champ’s IV (intravenous vitamin) scandal, focusing more on what he deems as an irregularity in Mayweather’s testosterone levels.
“I’m an old man and my ratio is 1-½ to 2. Mayweather’s ratio as an athlete should be between 2 and 3. For him to test less than 1 percent, something is wrong,” he told Fight Hub in a report on BoxingScene.com.
Mayweather allegedly used an IV after the official weigh-in, and got a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) a few weeks after the fight.
This is where Arum raised his eyebrows, as a report on SB Nation unveiled that Mayweather was tested with a .6 and .8 ratio between his testosterone and epitestosterone level, an abnormally low rate for an athlete.
“What could be wrong – is there’s a cream that you can take to get the ratio down, which is an epitestosterone cream, which you can’t really regulate it and if you rub it in you can lose control of the ratio. If a doctor saw a ratio in a young male athlete like .6 and .8, he should send them right to the hospital. That’s like in my mind virtually impossible. I’m not a doctor, but it’s something incredible,” Arum said.
The Top Rank boss said that this issue could be settled by testing Mayweather’s frozen urine samples with a carbon isotope ratio (CIR) test, where it can be seen if the atomic make-up of the testosterone in his urine is natural or synthetic.
“How do you test if something was going on? There are urine samples that you give, part of which are frozen. Take those frozen urine samples, do a CIR on it and you’ll see if there is anything in there that shows the use the performance enhancing drugs,” said Arum.
“Maybe there is nothing there. I don’t know. Mayweather fought for over ten years and I always considered him to be a very clean athlete. I never even thought he would ever use these kinds of drugs and I still remember the years he spent with us, but something smells wrong,” he added.
