Welterweight Ryan Garcia 25-1 (20) has vowed to fight the drug charges leveled against him by the Voluntary Ant-Doping Association (VADA).
The 25-year-old Los Angelan turned in a positive test for ostarine ahead of his bout against WBC junior welterweight champion Devin Haney 31-1 (15) at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on April 20.
Garcia also tested positive for 19-Norandrosterone, but further testing of the sample cleared him of having the illegal performance enhancing drug in his system.
Garcia, who weighed in at 143 1/4 pounds for his 140-pound bout against Haney, knocked down the champion three times to win on the cards via majority decision.
“If I was on steroids, I would have been in way better shape,” Garcia said on the Fully Tilted podcast.
“I was literally drinking every day, smoking weed… every single day. I did not stop, not even until the fucking day of the fight. I got in there high as fuck and I beat his ass.”
He added: “It was a walk in the fucking park. I had harder fights in sparring, bruh. It was not hard at all. Even Devin was like: ‘I’ve never been outclassed that much, that easily.’ Bro, steroids did not help that, brother.”
In a post on his social media account on X, Garcia wrote: “So y’all realise I didn’t fail the tests now. No substance other then this imaginary ostrich substance. Level so low wouldn’t have any effect. THEY TRIED BUT NO LIE STANDS. PRAISE GOD.”
Garcia will now have his B-sample tested in an effort to clear his name.
“This is proof we are dealing only with a known supplement contaminant in the billionth of a gram range that provided Ryan Garcia with no performance-enhancing benefit whatsoever on fight night,” Garcia’s attorney Darin Chavez told ESPN.
“We now wait for B-sample testing on the presence of low-level Ostarine only on May 22. He was negative 17 days before.”
Garcia’s position is that if he did have ostarine in his system, it came from a contaminated supplement.
“Ostarine is a PED you have to take in extremely large quantities,” veteran combat sports journalist Kevin Iole wrote on social media platform X.
“It will be important to know what the levels that Garcia tested at. If it’s in the picogram level, it suggests contaminated supplements. That is common. But it was IRMS tested, so it was there. How much is question.”
None of this makes the loss any easier for former undisputed lightweight champion Haney, 25, to accept.
“I spoke to Devin last night, he’s absolutely furious,” Haney’s promoter Eddie Hearn said to The Express.
“The guy came in three pounds overweight and had PEDs in his system. He will want an immediate no-contest.
“Regardless of Ryan’s innocence or guilt, he had PEDs in his system when he fought Devin and came in three pounds overweight.
“If you’re Devin, you’re thinking, ‘Fuck me, I’ve been screwed.'”
