

The rules in boxing and mixed martial arts are designed so that it is vastly easier for fighters to get away with using performance enhancing drugs than major team sports in the U.S.



On Monday, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig suspended 15 players who were clients of Biogenesis, a Miami anti-aging clinic, for periods ranging from 50 to 211 games. Almost all associated with the clinic effectively admitted guilt by accepting their punishment. The lone exception was Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who didn't exactly deny the accusations brought against him.

Rodriguez is eligible to continue playing pending an appeal, but if the 211-game suspension is upheld, he will lose $34 million in salary and may never play again.

No matter how you feel about Rodriguez – and he may be the most hated man in the sports world right now – contrast it to what is happening in the fight game.

Yuriorkis Gamboa, the interim WBA lightweight champion, was one of the athletes named in the original Miami New Times report in January. Gamboa fought in Montreal in June and didn't have to answer a single question about his appearance in the Biogenesis report.

Subsequently, Porter Fischer, the ex-Biogenesis employee who provided the information to the New Times about the PEDs that Biogenesis was supplying to star athletes, told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that there are more athletes who were Biogenesis customers than have been publicly named.

Among them, Fischer said, are boxers and MMA fighters.

No one in a position of power in either sport is proactively trying to root out the cheaters, as Major League Baseball did, frustrating anti-doping advocates and those who simply wish for combat sports to be clean.

[Video: Why Major League Baseball came down hard on Alex Rodriguez]

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Gamboa defeated Darleys Perez in Montreal in June and likely will be able to continue his career without being fearful his Biogenesis ties leading to a suspension.

Todd duBoef, the president of boxing promotional company Top Rank, called the situation a "Catch-22."

"Our sport is administered by the government and state agencies. They earn revenue from it, they administer the sport and enforce the rules and regulations. They should be more involved."

It's a similar stance to the one taken by UFC officials. UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta failed to return a message from Yahoo! Sports to discuss the Biogenesis situation as it relates to fighting.

UFC president Dana White made comments similar to duBoef following a fight card in Seattle on July 27. White's stance toward drug testing has always been that UFC fighters "are tested by the government," with the insinuation that government testing is the most thorough testing out there.

As White answered questions about Biogenesis, he said the various state athletic commissions, whom he referred to as "the government," are eager to catch chemically enhanced fighters.

He suggested the fighters are facing more stringent testing than baseball or NBA players.

"This is one of those things, man," White said. "It's so much different than baseball and basketball. Our guys get tested by the government, man. It's the government. It's how they make their money. They bust these guys on this stuff. That's how they get paid. They fine them, they this, they that. It's what they do. It's what they're there to do.

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