Ryan Garcia’s legal team claimed in a Thursday statement that two supplements the fighter ingested before his April 20 victory over Devin Haney have been tested and showed results of ostarine contamination.
By submitting two positive tests and “B” samples for that banned performance-enhancing substance, California’s Garcia confronts a ban, fine and an overturned victory from the New York State Athletic Commission.
In a Thursday statement, Garcia’s legal team, headed by attorney Darin Chavez, texted a prepared statement to BoxingScene and other news outlets reading, “The test results from samples of two supplements declared by Ryan Garcia on VADA Doping Control Forms, signed on April 19th and 20th, have returned positive for Ostarine contamination. This confirms what we have consistently maintained: Ryan was a victim of supplement contamination and has never intentionally used any banned or performance-enhancing substances.”
Chavez attached photos of two supplements he claims were tested by Sports Medicine Research and Testing in Utah: NutraBio’s raspberry-lemonade-flavored “Super Carb” and BodyHealth’s “Perfect Amino” powder.
The statement was Garcia’s first public mention of the supplements, after he previously said he had taken ashawaganda.
Officials from the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, who reported Garcia’s positive tests, did not immediately return messages left by BoxingScene questioning if Garcia reported to VADA that he was taking these specific supplements before the fight.
Also drawing scrutiny, Sports Medicine Research and Testing reported that both of those tested supplements were received unsealed, a process that contradicts the way disputed supplements are typically tested by anti-doping agencies and testers.
“To gain a no-fault ruling or a ruling of contamination, [testing authorities] are not going to accept open containers,” doping expert and Haney conditioning advisor Victor Conte of BALCO fame told BoxingScene on Thursday.
“The New York Commission won’t accept these results from a container that’s been opened. You’ve got to be joking. This sounds awfully fishy. This is some bulls***.
“The procedure is to test a sealed product, and several of them.”
Conte said, from his perspective, NutraBio and BodyHealth are credible supplement distributors – “totally certified.”
He added that another supplement testing company, Oliver Catlin’s BSCG, is deemed the gold-standard tester of supplements.
Garcia, 25, came in more than three pounds overweight before the Haney fight, jokingly drinking from a beer bottle on the ceremonial weigh-in scale, with Haney saying Garcia paid him a $1.5 million penalty for missing weight and missing his chance to fight for then-unbeaten Haney’s WBC 140-pound belt at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
By first rocking Haney with hard left hands in the first round, Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) set the tone and proceeded to knock down Haney three times before emerging with a majority decision victory.
Garcia has continually – and heatedly, at times – professed his innocence, and his legal team seized on these supplement findings to double-down on the notion that Garcia did not cheat to win.
“Any claims to the contrary, questioning Ryan’s integrity as a clean fighter, are unequivocally false and defamatory. Throughout his career, Ryan has voluntarily submitted to numerous tests, all of which have returned negative results, underscoring his commitment to fair and clean competition. “Additionally, multiple negative tests leading up to his fight against Haney further affirm his clean record,” the statement read.
“The ultra-low levels of Ostarine detected in his samples, in the billionth of a gram range, along with his clean hair sample, proves contamination rather than intentional ingestion. The recent test results reiterate this.”
Garcia and his legal team reported they will conduct a news conference in the next week to “provide more insight and answer questions.”
Read the full article here
