Chavez vs Rubio Drug Testing Fiasco: Texas Taking Blame, But Situation Still Stinks

The Texas athletic commission is attempting to take all the blame for not administering any post-fight drug tests following Saturday's fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Marco Antonio Rubio in San Antonio.

From Gabriel Montoya of MaxBoxing:

According to an official statement given to me by Ms. Stanford, Texas simply dropped the ball.

"The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation did not book the drug testing laboratory for the Top Rank event on February 4, 2012," the statement read. "Specimens were taken from Lowry and Martirosyan but in the absence of the independent testing laboratory the integrity of the samples could not be assured and they were destroyed. No further samples were taken. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation regrets this oversight and is addressing the procedure going forward."

The full article is a must-read, as Montoya did an excellent job digging into this story, and coming out with no real answers, but a lot of information.

Rubio's team is not taking this lying down. Texas is trying to take the fall here, but their story about not being prepared seems questionable at best. Chavez's team has gone on the defensive. And the WBC is trying to worm their way out of anything to do with this story, perfectly happy to let Texas absorb the blame, despite the fact that the WBC's own rules call for anti-doping tests in every title fight.

No matter how hard anyone tries to spin this or how much of the blame anyone tries to take, this situation continues to stink like month-old garbage. That it involves the Chavez team, the WBC, and the Texas commission all at once is red-flagging pretty much everyone, as none of those groups have sterling reputations among the boxing faithful. They can't undo this; something has to happen, or at least you'd think it would, but the end result is probably going to be the whole thing swept under the rug as best as possible. That's how these things are usually handled in boxing.

One other point I would like to make: After the Pacquiao vs Marquez scoring controversy in November, Sulaiman criticized the WBO (who sanctioned the fight and had a belt on the line) specifically, and said then that the sanctioning body involved had to explain the judging of the fight. All of three months later, Sulaiman will accept no responsibility for any of the controversy involving his organization in the Chavez vs Rubio matter.

Shocking, no?