BOXING: Anthony Joshua wants drug cheats to be banned for life

Bristish heavyweight boxer, Anthony Joshua has urged the World Boxing Association to be more ruthless in penalising drug cheats in the sport.

The star fighter of Nigerian heritage says it is better to hand life bans to drug cheats than just suspensions, noting that a fighter could someday get killed in the ring.

Joshua, who is preparing to defend his WBA, IBF, WBO, and IBO world title belts against Andy Ruiz Jnr on June 1, was initially slated to fight Jarrell Miller before the American failed multiple drug tests.

Miller was only banned for six months and Joshua believes it’s not enough to serve as a deterrent to prospective culprits.

“Imagine if I’d fought that Big Baby,” Joshua was quoted on UK paper, Daily Mail.

”After that, with all the proper bad stuff he was on, I might never have been the same fighter or person again.”

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He continued: “While It’s a shame about the circumstances of this fight, it’s for the best.”It seems as if it will take something as terrible as a fighter being killed in the ring for the authorities over there to take drugs seriously.

“That would make boxers think twice about the risk of getting caught. At the moment there is little or no fear because they know they can be back in the ring within months.

“It can be a nuisance, the testers knocking on the door at six or seven in the morning and delaying training runs and all that.

“But I’ve been doing this since my Olympic days and I’ve already been tested 16 times or more this year.

“It’s also expensive at about thirty grand time now, although what’s happened with Miller proves it’s worth it.

”And given the number of boxers who are testing positive the situation elsewhere looks to be out of control.

“Fury’s had his issues as well but that seems to have been forgotten already. Some of these other top guys have had it easy getting there, while for me it’s been done by hard, hard work.

”I’m beginning to realize that the fighters who throw these allegations at others do so because they are doing it. Now we know how Miller became such a physical specimen.”

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