Anti-doping

Most fighters who get suspended never decided to dope. They took something a teammate recommended, or a cold tablet on a Tuesday. Under strict liability none of that is a defence, so the only protection is knowing how the system works before it touches you.

Two areas catch people who never intended to break a rule: peptides sold as recovery aids, covered in peptides, and prescribed medication, which is the subject of competing over 35.

Strict liability, and why it decides everything else

One principle sits underneath the entire system. If a prohibited substance is found in your sample, it is your violation. Not your nutritionist's, not the manufacturer's, not the teammate who handed you the tub. Intent does not have to be shown by anyone, and its absence does not excuse you.

That sounds harsh until you look at the alternative. Accepting "I didn't know" as a defence would end testing as a functional idea, because everyone would say it. So the rule is hard on purpose, and every practical decision below follows from it.

What you can sometimes do is establish where a substance came from. A product, a batch, a date. That can reduce a sanction. It cannot erase one, and it only works if the evidence existed before the result arrived.

Prohibited covers methods, not only substances

Fighters tend to picture a list of drugs. The list also bans things you do.

Some entries apply at all times, in and out of competition: anabolic agents, hormones, most masking agents, blood manipulation, gene doping. Others apply only in competition, which includes stimulants, narcotics, glucocorticoids and cannabinoids. Tramadol joined the in-competition side on 1 January 2024.

The in-competition window is narrower than most people assume. It generally opens at 11:59 p.m. on the day before your scheduled competition, unless a different period has been approved for the sport. A substance that clears slowly can be taken well outside a fight and still be in you when that window opens.

The IV rule

Intravenous infusions and injections of more than 100 ml in any 12-hour period are prohibited. At all times. In and out of competition.

Read what that does and does not depend on. It does not depend on what is in the bag. Saline is prohibited at that volume. So is a vitamin drip, so is a plain rehydration solution, and so is a series of small injections that add up past the limit across 12 hours. The method itself is what is banned, which is why a permitted substance delivered this way still produces a violation.

The exceptions are narrow: fluids legitimately received during hospital treatment, a surgical procedure, or a clinical diagnostic investigation. Outside those, a Therapeutic Use Exemption is required. And if the substance in the bag is itself prohibited, that is two exemptions, not one.

The full version, with the documented cases, is iv drips. I raise it before anything else because of when it happens. A fighter comes off the scale badly depleted, someone offers to get fluid into him quickly, and a decision that feels medical gets made in a room with no medical file in it. The volume passes 100 ml without anyone counting. Oral rehydration done properly is slower, and it is not a violation.

Where the risk actually comes from

Almost nobody in this sport is running a doping programme. The suspensions come from a much duller set of places.

• Supplements. The largest single source, and the subject of its own article. Cross-contamination in shared production lines, undeclared ingredients, and marketing categories built around exactly the compounds that get flagged.
• Ordinary medicine. Cold and flu products are the recurring one. Several contain stimulants that are prohibited in competition above a threshold.
• Food, in specific countries. Livestock growth promoters can leave residues that reach a sample. Where that risk is real, and what to do about it.
• The corner and the gym. Anything handed to you by someone who is not accountable for the result.
• Recreational use out of season, which people assume is invisible. It is not, and the sanction for it is discussed below.

Substances of abuse

The Code carves out four: cocaine, heroin, MDMA and THC.

If an athlete can establish that use was out of competition and unrelated to sport performance, the suspension is 3 months. Completing a treatment programme can bring that down to one. Compared with the 4 years available for an intentional violation, that is a deliberate act of proportion by the people who wrote the rules.

Three months is still a training camp, a purse and a place in a rankings table. The full mechanics, with two recent cases, are here.

One caution on this section specifically. The figures above are the ones in force under the Code as it currently stands. This is an area the 2027 revision reworks, so confirm the version governing you rather than the one you read about somewhere.

Exemptions, if you actually need the medicine

A Therapeutic Use Exemption permits a prohibited substance or method where there is a real clinical need. No part of it is a loophole, and the standard is not casual: a documented diagnosis, no permitted alternative, no performance benefit beyond returning you to normal health.

Two practical points. Apply through the body that governs your competition, which may not be the one you assume. And apply before you need it, because retroactive applications succeed far less often than fighters expect. The full process is here.

Know which system you are in

Professional boxing has no single international federation that signed the Code, so testing in the sport is not centralised. Which programme governs your bout determines which list applies to you, whether you owe whereabouts filings, and who handles a result if one comes back.

Those differences are large enough to matter. A substance can be prohibited under one list and absent from another. The full map is here, and the short version is that one written question to your promoter answers most of it.

What protects you in practice

Everything above is context. That is the step that does the work.

Keep a written log. Every product, every batch number, every date started and stopped. Photograph the label and the batch code. This is the difference between being able to trace a source and standing in front of a panel with a memory.

Reduce the number of products. Every additional tub is another supplier, another production line, another chance. Most fighters take more than they need, and the ones taken "just in case" are usually the risky categories.

Use third-party tested products where you use any. Certification tests batches and moves the odds substantially, which is the honest claim for it; a substance-free product forever is more than any programme can promise.

Check every medication before you take it, including the boring ones. A pharmacist who does not work in sport will not know the list.

Do not throw anything away. Tubs, boxes, receipts, packaging. Keep them until well past the fight. That material is evidence and it costs you a shelf.

Ask in writing which programmes apply, and keep the reply.

The part I want fighters to take from this

Nothing on this page requires expertise. A log, fewer products, one email, a shelf of empty tubs. It is administration, and administration is boring, which is precisely why it does not get done until somebody needs it and it is not there.

The fighters I have seen lose years were not cheating. They were careless on a Tuesday about something that seemed too small to write down.