Sunny Edwards’ shocking proposal, made less than a week before his highly anticipated derby against Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion Galal Yafai, risks diverting media and fan attention away from the dynamics of the fight itself. Edwards, who will vie for the vacant WBC Interim Flyweight title next Saturday in Birmingham, expressed his controversial views on doping in boxing in a detailed interview with BoxingScene.com.
The 28-year-old British boxer believes that the most dangerous scenario for a fighter’s safety and health is stepping into the ring “clean” against an opponent who has used banned substances. According to Edwards, it might be fairer to allow everyone to take whatever they want to level the playing field between honest competitors and cheaters.
Here is an excerpt from his comments on anti-doping controls:
“If anything, I think that makes the whole thing unsafer and probably would be more satisfying with an environment where people are just doing whatever they want.
“I think there’s clearly too many people that get away with it. I mean, there’s probably corners of this world that are using stuff that the other corners of the world don’t even know exist. Like, what’s the chance of that not being the case? There’s definitely the chance of these mad supplements or things that people are taking and after a few years, then they become something that they look into and ban and for years [after] people were taking it.
“What are we doing here? We’re creating like a list and then there’s some people advising the people that create the list of what should and shouldn’t be, and when they’re doing so, they’re probably, ‘Oh, that one’s OK, I’ll just put in a couple of little grey ones that they can slip through and are never going to work.’ We’re dealing with people doing people things at every level of this pyramid that we’re in. I don’t know, I just feel like the unsafest place in any boxing ring is one person getting in, getting away with having something in their system they’re not supposed to and the other person not. That’s the unsafest, and I don’t think we, clearly, [catch] 100 per cent of [cheaters] to guarantee that.”
Sunny Edwards’ shocking proposal to abolish testing is particularly surprising, coming from a boxer who has never tested positive for doping and has always claimed not to use banned substances. In the past, similar statements have been made by fighters hit with long suspensions, often seeming like attempts to deflect blame by pointing fingers at the system and invoking the “everyone cheats” argument.
The doping issue recently made headlines following a public accusation by Tevin Farmer, who claimed that neither he nor his opponent William Zepeda underwent the usual pre-fight tests despite his repeated requests. This breach of WBC rules and the fighters’ signed contracts was a clear violation.