Ryan Garcia’s lawyers said in a statement Thursday that testing of two supplements the fighter took before his April 20 win over Devin Haney showed they were contaminated with Ostarine.
Garcia, a California native, faces a suspension, fine and the overturning of his victory by the New York State Athletic Commission after he twice tested positive for banned performance-enhancing substances and submitted a “B” sample.
In a statement Thursday, Garcia’s legal team, led by attorney Darin Chavez, texted a prepared statement to BoxingScene and other media outlets. ““Two supplement samples declared by Ryan Garcia on the VADA Doping Control Forms he signed on April 19th and 20th have tested positive for ostarine contamination. This confirms what we have maintained all along: Ryan was the victim of supplement contamination and has never knowingly used any banned or performance-enhancing substances.”
Chavez attached photos of two supplements he claims were tested at a sports medicine research lab in Utah: NutraBio’s raspberry lemonade flavored “Super Carb” and Body Health’s “Perfect Amino” powder.
Garcia has previously said he was taking ashawagandha, but this was the first time he’d publicly mentioned the supplement.
Officials with the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, which reported Garcia’s positive test, did not immediately respond to a message from BoxingScene asking whether they had informed VADA that Garcia had been taking certain supplements before the fight.
The Sports Medicine Research Trial also reported that both supplements tested were received sealed, prompting scrutiny as a process that is inconsistent with how anti-doping agencies and investigators typically test the supplements in question.
“To get a no-fault judgment or a contamination judgment, [testing authorities] “We won’t accept any opened containers,” Victor Conte of BALCO, a doping expert and well-known conditioning adviser to Haney, told Boxing Scene on Thursday.
“The New York State Commission will not accept these results taken from opened containers. This is a joke. This is very suspicious. This is bullshit.”
“The procedure is to test multiple sealed products.”
Conte said that from his perspective, NutraBio and Body Health are trusted supplement distributors and are “fully accredited.”
He added that another supplement testing company, Oliver Catlin’s BSCG, is considered the gold standard testing company for supplements.
The 25-year-old Garcia was more than three pounds overweight before the fight with Haney and jokingly drank a beer bottle at the ceremonial weigh-in stand. Haney said Garcia paid $1.5 million as a penalty for being overweight and missing out on fighting Haney, then unbeaten, for Haney’s WBC 140-pound belt at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) rocked Haney with a powerful left punch in the first round, then knocked him down three times to win by majority decision.
Garcia has consistently, and at times vehemently, maintained his innocence, and his defense has used these supplemental findings to bolster its view that Garcia did not cheat to win.
““Any assertion to the contrary that doubts Ryan’s integrity as a clean fighter is patently false and defamatory. Ryan has voluntarily submitted to numerous tests throughout his career, all of which have resulted in negative results, underscoring his commitment to fair and clean competition. “Further, his multiple negative tests leading up to the bout with Haney further support his clean record,” the statement read.
“The extremely low levels of ostarine detected in his samples – just a few parts per billion of a gram – and the fact that his hair samples were uncontaminated proves contamination rather than intentional ingestion, and recent laboratory results support this.”
Garcia and his lawyers said they plan to hold a press conference next week to “provide further information and answer questions.”
