Things got somewhat crazy on Twitter recently, when former women’s female champion Mia St. John took to her personal account to fire back at some of the backlash former champion Canelo Alvarez has received in the wake of his failed drug test from earlier this year. Alvarez tested positive for the weight-cutting drug Clenbuterol, saw his May rematch with Gennady Golovkin canceled, and will now face him on September 15 in Las Vegas.
“Whatever. Everyone does it & everyone in boxing knows it,” St. John tweeted. She later admitted to Los Angeles Times writer Lance Pugmire that she used performance-enhancing substances throughout her own career.
St. John’s tweet set off a huge firestorm of responses from several people online, including former cruiserweigght champion Tony Bellew, who stated.
“Sorry to inform you, but not everyone does it, sweetie! Some of us former world champions actually believe in training insanely hard and having a fair fight … . It’s sad and worrying that people taking PEDs actually think like you do.”
Former junior middleweight champion Sergio Mora added his two cents.
“That’s what makes winning so satisfying — the [expletive] sacrifice.”
St. John spoke with The Time about her involvement. During a nearly 20-year career that stretched from 1997 through 2016, St. John has 65 fights, going 49-14-2 overall. She admitted that she used such drugs as Winstrol, Deca Durabolin and Anavar, along with other various banned masking agents and weight-loss substances to prepare for an estimated 20 fights.
“Obviously, I’m a Canelo fan, but I hate it when other fighters put down other fighters for something we all know is rampant in boxing,” St. John said. “I never once tested positive, and I’ve never told anyone this, but now that I’m retired I feel like it’s OK. It’s not right, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s a vicious cycle we get caught up in. You’re in a gym. You’re in a big camp. Obviously, I was part of the biggest shows of my time.”
St. John also noted that she felt somewhat of a peer pressure to keep up with what is going on around the gym.
“So when your camp is doing it, it’s going around the gym, your sparring partners are doing it, you feel compelled, ‘Oh my God, I have to do it’, to keep up with everybody,” St. John said. “It’s a mind trick. And once you’re on it, it’s so hard to come off because it becomes very addicting. That’s what people don’t know.”
One thing St. John refuses to do is incriminate anyone else who she knew was using banned substances.
“I’m not going to say what fights [I used] because then people can trace back to what cards I was on, what camp I was in, who I was training with … I would never out anybody,” she stated.
