De La Hoya says Canelo will definitely fight in September
At last some good news for Mexican star Canelo Alvarez. As per a piece on ESPN.com, Alvarez, who submitted to a hair follicle test in an effort to prove his is not a cheat and did not purposely ingest the banned substance clenbuterol (Canelo failing two blood and urine tests, traces of the substance being found in his system) saw the hair test of March 29 come back clean, on April 20.
According to experts, clebuterol can be detected in hair for “several months,” whereas it remains detectable in urine “for less than a week after it is ingested.”
“Clenbuterol, like many other substances, accumulates in very small amounts in hair follicles. If an athlete has taken the substance over a period of time in the past, his/her hair test might return a positive for a period of six months or longer. Conversely, if the clenbuterol resulted from a single incident, in which the subject had eaten meat for example, a hair test would almost certainly be negative,” a statement from Dopeology.org reads.
Naturally Golden Boy heads Oscar De La Hoya and Eric Gomez are stating how this clean test “proves” Canelo’s innocence; that the fighter merely did as he has always maintained and unintentionally ate contaminated meat in Mexico.
“They found traces of clenbuterol in his system and if he was using it [to dope] there would probably still be enough in his system that it would show up in his hair,” De La Hoya told ESPN.com. “We did the hair test to prove this was accidental. Canelo is telling the truth about the meat contamination and he went far and beyond what he had to do by agreeing to have this hair test done so he can keep on proving that he is an innocent fighter.”
So although critics and doubters will remain, to many this new evidence suggests quite strongly that Canelo is in fact an innocent fighter after all (innocent yet foolish, as in foolish enough to have eaten meat in Mexico when he and his team knew there was an ongoing problem with contaminated meat in Mexico).
De La Hoya says Canelo will now look to take a lie detector test to further prove he is a clean athlete.
“He is willing to do whatever it takes to clear his name, including taking a lie detector test,” De La Hoya said of his fighter. “We’re going to do one.”
De La Hoya also said that Canelo will “definitely fight in September.”
Could we then, see the big rematch between Golovkin and Canelo this September? Can Canelo ever fully restore his good name? For the first time since this whole story arose, Alvarez has had some good news at least.