Caleb Plant savages Canelo Alvarez and his trainer Eddy Reynoso after gymmate Oscar Valdez is cleared to fight despite testing positive for phentermine

Caleb Plant has ripped into Canelo Alvarez and his trainer Eddy Reynoso after gymmate Oscar Valdez was cleared to fight despite a positive drugs test.

It was revealed earlier this week that the WBC super-featherweight champion tested positive for phentermine – a central-nervous stimulant.

His team have insisted that the Mexican did not knowingly ingest the substance ahead of his defence against Robson Conceicao on September 10 and claim to believe it came from “an herbal tea”.

Phentermine is on the VADA banned list, but VADA merely collect the samples and report test results. They do not enforce rulings, this is the job of the various boxing commissions.

Some commissions adhere to the VADA banned list when ruling on such matters, but others follow the WADA code.

Under the WADA code, phentermine is only banned ‘in competition’ – and the ‘in competition’ period only begins on fight day itself.

As such, the local commission in this instance have cleared Valdez to fight regardless of the positive test.

Valdez achieved a career-best win back in February as he knocked out long-reigning champion Miguel Berchelt to become a two-weight king.

Now, some boxers across the sport are not only raising questions about him, but his camp, too.

Valdez is part of Reynoso’s ‘Canelo Team’ – widely considered one of the greatest stables in boxing today.

Reynoso is thought to be the frontrunner for Trainer of the Year in 2021 having not only guided Valdez to a stunning win, but also trained Ryan Garcia, Andy Ruiz Jr and boxing’s pound-for-pound king Canelo himself.

Back in 2018, Canelo received a six-month ban after testing positive for clenbuterol and had to postpone his rematch with Gennady Golovkin as a result.


He always insisted this test result was due to contaminated meat in Mexico.

In 2019, WBC flyweight champion Julio Cesar Martinez, also part of Reynoso’s gym, tested positive for clenbuterol as well.

However, WADA (World Anti-Doping Association) recognised the issue in Mexico and so raised the allowable threshold, meaning Martinez was not punished.

The WBC subsequently put out a statement insisting that this was “confirmation of the innocence” of Canelo.

Regardless, in some quarters the damage was already done in terms of the reputation of Reynoso’s gym.

Now, two years later, the situation with Valdez has reignited such talk.

Caleb Plant is set to face Canelo in a career-defining undisputed title fight.

The American IBF super-middleweight champion went on a rant after seeing the news about Valdez being cleared to fight.

Plant began: “Damn shame. Some people want to be great so bad that they cheat and then there’s people who want to be GREAT so bad that they DON’T. Doing that isn’t confidence, it’s FEAR!

“Na, Eddy Reynoso and Canelo deserve ‘BITCH of the Year’!

“All of them are suspect. Everything out of that camp is intentional.

“They have the knowledge and experience to know better and the resources to have the best of the best in whatever they want but [taco emoji] or [meat emoji] or some [herbal tea emoji] is the reason.

“Nobody puts ANYTHING in MY BODY without me getting it approved first by VADA (whose the strictest testing company) at this level.

“And with everything that’s at risk, why would I let somebody else play with MY name.

“So after everything a fighter works for and sacrifices you’re just going to let someone tell you to take something and you’re just going to take it and not even be concerned that they may be FLUSHING all you’ve accomplished down the drain.

“Because at the end of the day has a name even been mentioned of who might of gave him the “herbal tea” NOPE!

“The only name that’s came out is the one who took it so why let someone put you in that position.

“If you really start asking yourself these questions and really start unpackaging all this question by question does it really add up?

“Does it really may sense? F*** NO. This sport has no place for cheaters.

“You mean to tell me you have made over a $100million and live in San Diego, but you ate some tacos or a steak at some random ass taco stand in Mexico or some random ass steak and just doing that once made your levels THAT HIGH?

“Get the f*** outta here. People don’t take this stuff out of confidence, they take it out of FEAR!

“They don’t wanna let their NUTS HANG so they take s*** that’ll make them shrink.

“I said what I said and I stand by it so f*** whoever don’t like it. The people INNNNN the sport know what’s up, but the ones who don’t speak up are the same ones who cheat just like them.

“It almost seems frowned upon to even speak up on this stuff in boxing but I don’t give a f***.

“There’s a whole other world out there when it comes to banned substances that people in the fight game don’t wanna speak up about but I could care less. There’s no room it.”

https://talksport.com/sport/boxing/9...z-phentermine/