California commission head Andy Foster weighs in on PEDs, scoring controversies and more

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Click here for Part 1, highlighting Andy Foster’s background as a fighter-turned-commissioner.

A boxer who takes two punches for every one he lands probably isn’t going to last long. A boxer who gives two for every one he takes is probably going to the Hall of Fame.

Anyone who’s been following boxing long enough knows that, all too often, it’s a sport that takes two steps back for every one step up. And though it’s impossible to eliminate the backward steps entirely, California State Athletic Commission Executive Director Andy Foster is committed to trying to help the sport take two steps up for every one step back. If he can get boxing to land two punches for every one punch that it takes, he’ll be doing his job damned well.

In his conversation with BoxingScene shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday, Foster shared his thoughts on four of the most controversial topics perpetually knocking boxing backward: fighters cutting weight to dangerous degrees, fighters failing to make weight and holding size advantages over their opponents, PED use, and bad decisions issued by ringside judges.

In his roles overseeing first the Georgia commission from 2008-’12 and now its California counterpart since 2012, Foster has always placed a heavy emphasis on trying to reduce the harm caused by extreme weight-cutting. He believes it’s the single most important safety-related topic in MMA, and is at least in the top two or three in boxing.

But he does not think a return to same-day weigh-ins — the standard until about 40 years ago — is a realistic option.

“Anytime you shift a policy related to weight cutting, you could have ramifications that you’ve not really thought about,” Foster said. “If I move the day of the weigh-in — well, first off, I don’t think the business side of the industry would go along with that, because of the value in advertising the fight at the weigh-in the day before. But another reason is, sometimes you lose fights at the weigh-in, and you’ve got no way to get a replacement last-minute. There’s just no way. I know it’s difficult to get a replacement when you’re losing a fight at the day-before weigh-in, but it would be impossible, more or less, the day of the fight.”

In California, every fighter steps on a scale again on fight day, and Foster noted that he keeps a database showing how much weight every fighter gains in those 24 hours or so — with a flag planted for monitoring purposes on each fighter who is more than 10 per cent heavier on the day of the fight. 

Another perilous topic involving the scale is that of what to do when a boxer fails to make weight. We’ve seen two egregious high-profile examples this year, resulting in opposite outcomes (neither one in California).

For his April bout against Devin Haney with a 140-pound limit, Ryan Garcia weighed 143¼ and paid a financial penalty in order to enter the ring larger than his opponent and theoretically less drained from the final push to shed pounds. Garcia — who also tested positive for the banned substance ostarine — scored three knockdowns and delivered a physical beating, likely owing in some part to the size difference, although the fight was ultimately ruled a no-contest due to the failed drug tests. 

Three weeks ago, Keyshawn Davis made the 135-pound limit for his homecoming fight but opponent Gustavo Lemos came nowhere near it, scaling 141½ pounds, and, like Garcia, paying a chunk of his purse in exchange for the potential advantage. In this instance, the size discrepancy didn’t matter, as the gifted Davis dusted Lemos in just over four minutes of action.

The California State Athletic Commission has specific rules about the allowable “weight spread,” as Foster refers to it, on the day of the fight. Neither Haney-Garcia nor Davis-Lemos would have been canceled at the weigh-in, as long as the fighters came to an agreement to proceed, but they could have been canceled on fight day if the combatants weren’t close enough to the same size.

Foster noted the unusual example of a January 2023 women’s bout on a Tom Loeffler-promoted card in Montebello, California, between bantamweights Stefi Cohen and Kedra Bradley. Cohen scaled 117.6 at the weigh-in, Bradley rather light for the division at 114. At the next-day weigh-in, Cohen was up to 129.4, while Bradley had lost significant poundage, dropping down to 109.8.

“There was a tremendous amount of difference between the two fighters on the day of the fight,” Foster recalled, “and [Bradley] was what I would consider to be the B side of this contest, and I no longer felt comfortable regulating it for the state. So I just canceled it.

“We’ve had some of our [fight-day weight] data crunched by Harvard Medical, and they’ve been making some scientific conclusions that we’re taking into account. I mean, the purpose is to make sure that the people are fighting essentially on a level playing field — as level as it can be. And if it’s not level, the commission will step in.”

Thanks in part to Garcia, the topics of weight discrepancies and PED penalties are related issues these days.

BoxingScene asked Foster if he feels the penalties for positive PED tests in boxing are stiff enough to discourage use of banned substances.

“Well, I think there’s a lot of factors to consider,” he replied, noting that he’d just finished texting back and forth with Hall of Fame ringside physician Dr. Margaret Goodman about a PED suspension in California. “It depends on what the substance is, for one thing. If it’s just a SARM — one of those selective androgen receptor modulators — if it’s just a SARM that you can get in the stuff sold down at the nutrition center, you’ve got to treat that differently than synthetic testosterone, in my view. Now, does that mean that you don’t address it at all? No, because you’re responsible for what’s in your body.

“My job is consumer protection. My job is to protect the public, and the state, and the other athletes that are going to be fighting this person.”

Foster noted that he recently gave a fighter a suspension that would end after nine months if that fighter enrolled in the VADA program (which Goodman founded) and tested clean.

“Once the drug test is clean,” Foster said, “then they’re fined a little bit, but they’re also having to pay for this drug testing on their own and it was like $5,000 or whatever, so that’s like a fine. But they’re ensuring that they’re able to compete fairly, and as long as they’re in the VADA program, we can feel pretty good about whether they’re gonna fight clean or not.”

In Foster’s experience, most of the use of PEDs occurs a bit below the world-championship level.

“If you’re at that very top level, you’ll be fighting in either California, Nevada, or New York, and those places use Dr. Eichner for testing,” Foster said, referring to Salt Lake City-based Sports Medicine Research & Testing Laboratory President and Director Dr. Daniel Eichner. “Once you get to that level, you just don’t see the drug test failures like you did in that lower- to mid-range of the boxers. I know that’s probably not the popular answer that the media likes to portray. But I’m telling you, it’s harder to cheat at the higher levels.”

PEDs, size discrepancies, and extreme weight cuts all present legitimate physical dangers to boxers. There’s one other perpetual cause of controversy in the sport that isn’t threatening anyone’s health, though it can dramatically impact livelihoods: bad decisions.

As a commissioner, part of Foster’s job is to put the best judges he can in the biggest spots, knowing that close and debatable decisions will never go away, but that his actions can help reduce the number of verdicts that draw extreme backlash.

“There’s a lot of people that want to judge big fights, and I appreciate that. Well, I’d like to fly the space shuttle, but they’re not giving me the keys,” Foster said. “We know who the good ones are. BoxRec compiles a national judges’ ranking for commissions to use. And it’s just math, based on being in agreement with the other judges.

“Now, just because you’re in agreement with the majority, that doesn’t mean that you scored the round right. But over a period of many, many rounds, you can start to draw some conclusions. If you’re talking about someone who’s got 400, 500, 600 rounds, and they’re breaking with the other two judges 25 percent or so of the time, maybe they should try golf or something.”

There are no easy answers to the problems plaguing boxing. But sometimes there are easy messages to receive in this sport. And if the former professional MMA fighter who is now the executive director of California’s athletic commission tells you to try golf … your best course of action would probably be to go buy yourself a set of clubs.

Click here for Part 1, highlighting Andy Foster’s background as a fighter-turned-commissioner.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].