When the news broke that Canelo Alvarez had been flagged for a banned substance, the questions surrounding his dominance across weight divisions and his highly anticipated rematchwith Gennady “GGG” Golovkin came under scrutiny from the media and unrelenting social media trolls.
Following an investigation by the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission into two drug test failures, Alvarez was temporarily suspended on Friday, putting his May 5th middleweight title rematch against Golovkin in serious jeopardy.
The incident, now colloquially known as “Meat-Gate” occurred according to Alvarez when he unknowingly took a banned substance and blamed the drug test failure on eating contaminated meat. Alvarez was at his home in Guadalajara, Mexico at the time of the test failures.
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Alvarez tested positive for the anabolic agent Clenbuterol twice, on Feb. 17 and Feb. 20. He will be required to attend a hearing in front of the entire commission on April 10th in Las Vegas.
Golden Boy released the following statement supporting Alvarez:
We respect the Nevada State Athletic Commission process and will vigorously present Canelos case throughout, the statement read. Over his career, Canelo has tested clean more than 90 times and would never intentionally take a banned substance.
GGG’s Promoter, Tom Loeffler, spoke with Yahoo Sports about his take on the issue, stating that Golovkin will continue to train and still hopes to fight on May 5th.
A lot of people thought they would just shove this under the rug because they wanted the fight to happen, but with this investigation and the action theyve taken today, theyve proven otherwise, Loeffler said of the commission. We met today and Bob said they had to give him the suspension per their regulations, but he pointed out that Canelo complied with every request and that he passed multiple tests given to him since the failures. So theyll have the hearing on April 10 and well see what happens then. But Gennady definitely wants to fight and hes going to proceed as if the fight is still happening.
There is no worse thing for a professional athlete than to be accused of cheating, and now Canelo has to climb his way out of that extremely thin paper bag.
