Does boxing have a major drugs problem? Enter the ring Victor Conte of Balco infamy, the man who provided British sprinter Dwain Chambers and five-times Olympic gold medal sprinter Marion Jones, among others, with performance enhancing drugs. 

He has branded boxing’s attempts to catch the cheats at “inept” and claims drug use in the sport – and it must be emphasised he is speaking mainly about the United States - is rife due to lax regulation.

"The testing in boxing is virtually worthless," he claims. A view echoed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) which called boxing’s testing "pathetic."

The problem is that professional boxing is one of the few sports not regulated by a single governing body. The USA has numerous commissions with different rules. The amateur game of course has AIBA who embrace WADA’s regulations. "I don’t believe professional boxing wants to know how rampant the use of drugs really is," says Conte. "Testing in boxing is completely and totally inept.",

He fears testosterone and EPO are both in regular use. By coincidence, the British promoter, Frank Warren commenting on how the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao mega-bucks fight had fallen apart because of Mayweather’s insistence on blood testing for the Filipino who has moved through the weight divisions to win six world titles, reckons there could be an increasing problem within boxing. (It has to be noted that Pacquiao is suing Mayweather’s camp for defamation saying they alleged he took performance enhancing drugs).

According to Warren, there is "a strong rumour" that one leading British fighter - and his trainer - have been taking human growth hormone. Obviously the fighter is not a member of Warren’s camp. "HGH adds bulk and if taken in excessive amount is seen by some idiots as the perfect pill for fighters who want to move quickly into higher weight divisions," says Warren. "I would like to see British boxers randomly tested for HGH."

One of the curiosities of the sequel to the Mayweather-Pacquiao spat is that Mayweather has now signed to meet Shane Mosley (pictured), a boxer who has previously admitted, albeit he says unknowingly, to drug use. Will Mayweather now demand he is blood tested too?  Or was his previous stance designed to avoid meeting Pacquiao?  It was Conte who first accused Mosley of taking PEDs when he utilised Balco’s services.



Mosley maintained that he believed the products he was using were legal vitamins though in May 2008, Mosley's former trainer told a grand jury that in 2003 that the boxer injected himself with the doping agent EPO as he prepared for a fight against "Golden Boy" Oscar De La Hoya, whose own preparations have now been called into question in a new book by the US author Thomas Hauser. 

In the USA the authorities have certainly soft-pedalled on boxing’s drugs issue, notably where famous names have been involved. Because he never tested positive Mosley has not been sanctioned and when world light-heavyweight champion Roy Jones did test positive for androsteniodene in 2000 he was allowed to keep his titles and was neither fined nor suspended. Five years later James Toney defeated John Ruiz -David Haye’s next opponent- to win the WBA heavyweight title but tested positive for the steroid stanazolol. He received only a 90-day ban.

This week Britain's trade paper, Boxing News joined the drugs debate under the headline "The Hurtful Truth" saying: "The Mayweather–Pacquiao fall-out opened a can of worms that boxing has never wanted to delve into too deeply." It warns that a high profile fighter could be seriously injured by another who has taken performance enhancing drugs. 

However there has never been a significant British boxer, amateur or professional who has failed a drugs test for steroid use and both the ABA and the pro game’s British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) insist they adhere to strict drug testing regulations. "The BBBC is fully compliant with WADA and carry out mandatory and random checks," says the Board’s general secretary Robert Smith while ABA spokesman Ron Boddy tells us that all the internationals, at all age groups, are randomly tested on a regular basis and there is random testing throughout all the championships, domestic and international.

UK Sport records show that since 2003 ten professional boxers have tested positive in Britain, three of them from overseas. Since 2005 four amateurs have failed tests, one of them for cannabis. Curiously, the highest profile boxer who failed to pass a drugs test in this country is a woman, Liverpool’s Jade Mellor, two-times ABA featherweight champion who was a 2012 Olympics prospect. 

This happened last July after she tested positive for a diuretic, claiming she took it to help make weight because of the onset of her period on the morning of her ABA final.  A masking agent was also present. Her appeal failed and she has been suspended for two years.

One certainty is that Britain’s past and present Olympic squads are all clean. "As a top amateur you were tested regularly," says the Olympic gold medallist James DeGale. "It was random, they can turn up day and night and when I won the Olympic gold I had both a blood and urine test.  It’s pretty strict."

In the light of the comments by Warren and Conte, let’s hope it becomes even stricter. For, more than any other, boxing is a sport that dices far too closely with danger without drugs being injected into its inherent risks.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist and boxing correspondent of The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered 11 summer Olympics and numerous world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.