Quote Originally Posted by p4pking
Pernell Whittaker had a streak where he was training very very little, just when h e was getting into Cocaine I believe... THe few fights before he fought DLH were the worst I think... He needed to fight Wilfredo Rivera twice to get a convincing decision(though he wasn't a total bum at the time), and then was way behind and had been dropped twice by Disobleys Hurtado.
Ya, Whitaker never actually tested positive for cocaine until the Pestriev fight, which was the one after DLH, but I've always believed his lifestyle started to unravel way before that. I believe cocaine only stays in your system for 2-3 days, so since he failed a drug test, that means he was snorting coke right up until the days before the fight, which is crazy. I assume it had to take a couple years for him to get to that point of abuse.

The last fight where he really looked good was the second McGirt fight, which was in late '94. After that he always looked out of shape and undertrained, he got knocked down in several fights in a row against mediocre opponents, and his behavior and attitude in the ring seemed to get bizarre.
I think he temporarily cleaned up his act for the DLH fight, because he obviously knew he couldn't mess around if he was going to go 12 rounds with a young guy like Oscar. But once he lost that fight controversially, I think he fell apart for good.

Seeing him fight at age 37 with a flabby beer gut on ESPN2 was pretty depressing.