Following their controversial bout on Friday in Australia, there's now more stink coming off of the Sonny Bill Williams-Frans Botha bout, as Botha reportedly failed a drug test, but an Australian boxing official has doubts over the validity of the claim.
Australian National Boxing Federation committee member John Hogg is the official who went on record:
Hogg told News Limited there were no compulsory performance-enhancing drug tests required for boxers in Queensland and he had never heard of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) spot-testing professional boxers in Queensland.
"I would think I would have heard about ASADA testing Botha or Sonny Bill because they have never showed up to boxing gyms in Queensland or on fight night."
If you missed the big to-do about this fight, the bout was advertised as a 12-round fight, which everyone thought it was going in, and then suddenly changed to 10 rounds directly after Williams (6-0, 3 KO) was hurt in the ninth round. Sonny Bill survived the tenth, but appeared to be on his way out. Had the fight gone 12, few believe the rugby star would have been able to hang on.
Williams got the win over Botha (48-9-3, 29 KO), and the scoring wasn't controversial, but the entire fight is in question. Another report after the fight said that the judges at ringside were not told it was a 10-round fight, and a WBA representative isn't even sure that the fight was actually sanctioned by the organization.
This debacle is now all but an absolute farce, and the story likely hasn't ended. Or maybe it has, since usually these things get swept under the rug at about this stage of the mess.