{"id":417020,"date":"2025-09-11T23:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417020\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T23:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T23:39:11","slug":"trainer-advertised-performance-enhancing-drugs-before-working-with-canelo-alvarez-boxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417020\/","title":{"rendered":"Trainer advertised performance-enhancing drugs before working with Canelo \u00c1lvarez | Boxing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A trainer who is working with Canelo \u00c1lvarez<\/a> advertised \u00adperformance-enhancing drugs for sale, including human growth \u00adhormone, before he joined the super-middleweight \u00adboxer\u2019s team, the Guardian can\u00a0reveal.<\/p>\n

Rulas Arreola, also known as Raul Arreola Dosal, has travelled to Las Vegas with Canelo to prepare for a \u201csuper fight\u201d with the \u00adundefeated \u00adAmerican Terence Crawford<\/a> on Saturday. It is a contest marketed as a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime event that marks the \u00adbeginning of a bold new era in\u00a0boxing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arreola says he has never \u00adrecommended, provided or sold any banned substance to any athlete or anybody who was subject to any anti-doping rules.<\/p>\n

But the persistent involvement of \u00adperformance-enhancing drugs in boxing is threatening to cast a shadow over the fight that is to be streamed live by\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n

Travis Tygart, the chief \u00adexecutive of the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), said the advertising of the substances by Arreola via social media are \u201csignificant flags that ought to be looked into\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arreola is a physical trainer who has worked with \u00c1lvarez in two stints, first from August 2017 to December\u00a02018, and for a second time since the spring of 2023. He carried one of \u00c1lvarez\u2019s title belts to the ring in his most recent world \u00adchampionship fight, against the Cuban William Scull in May.<\/p>\n

A former bodybuilder, Arreola runs the Radical Nutrition gym in Guadalajara, \u00adMexico, and offers clients personalised training\u00a0plans.<\/p>\n

In 2016 and up to February 2017, before he began working with \u00ad\u00c1lvarez, he advertised \u00adperformance-enhancing drugs, prohibited for use by athletes, on his personal and business \u00adFacebook accounts. He marketed some of the drugs for improving \u201cathletic \u00a0performance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arreola refers to his business page, Radical Nutrition, as \u201cmy official page\u201d and is pictured in the\u00a0profile photo. The phone number he provided in several of the posts is still listed on his Facebook\u00a0page.<\/p>\n

All of the posts were live on his accounts until this month. They disappeared after Arreola was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

Some drugs that were \u00adadvertised by Arreola are prohibited for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and the major boxing \u00adcommissions, which follow Wada\u2019s \u201cprohibited list\u201d. At the time of the posts, it is understood the trainer was not a boxing licence holder and was therefore not subject to anti-doping rules in the sport. However, Arreola claimed to be working with other professional athletes who competed in sports regulated by Wada. There is no suggestion he supplied banned \u00adperformance-enhancing drugs to those \u00adprofessional athletes.<\/p>\n

In August 2016, he advertised growth hormone releasing \u00adpeptides, such as ipamorelin, on both his accounts.<\/p>\n

In November 2016, \u00adArreola \u00adadvertised the peptide \u201cHuman\u00a0Growth Hormone \u00adFragment 176-191\u201d, calling his followers to \u201corder now\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 2017, Radical Nutrition \u00adadvertised synthetic human growth hormone (HGH), sold under the brand name Xerendip. The drug is used by athletes to increase lean body\u00a0mass and improve recovery \u00adduring \u00adtraining. When a follower asked for the price of the Xerendip, he was directed to the same phone\u00a0number.<\/p>\n

Xerendip is the Mexican brand of HGH that was sent by post to the elite Nigerian sprinter Blessing \u00adOkagbare shortly before the Tokyo 2020 \u00adOlympics. Okagbare was \u00adsupplied the drugs by the Texas-based \u00adnaturopath Eric Lira, who was sentenced to jail for running a criminal doping\u00a0conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Arreola said in a statement to the Guardian: \u201cI began to work with Mr \u00c1lvarez in the summer of 2017. Prior to the time, my company, Radical Nutrition, operated a store in \u00adMexico that sold a variety of legal supplements to non-athlete members of the public who wished to take them in furtherance of their own fitness goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not recommend any \u00adparticular supplement to anyone, and, if asked, told potential \u00adcustomers that everyone had \u00addifferent needs and requirements and that they should talk to a \u00addoctor and do their own research before \u00adtaking anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI closed this element of my business when I began to work with Mr \u00c1lvarez to avoid the type of rumour that you apparently now seek to\u00a0initiate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt no point, either before or since beginning my relationship with Mr \u00c1lvarez, have I recommended, provided or sold any banned substance to any athlete or anybody who was subject to any anti-doping rules, testing or protocols.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tygart said Arreola\u2019s posts raise \u201csignificant flags that ought to be looked into\u201d by the relevant anti-doping authorities. Between 2010 and 2018, Usada conducted doping controls in \u00adboxing.<\/p>\n

Tygart said: \u201cCertainly, in the Olympic world that would be something that would be investigated. If an Olympic coach who was coaching Olympians under our jurisdiction, on our Olympic side that we were involved with, was selling or distributing performance-enhancing drugs, that would certainly spark us looking into it and wanting to meet and talk with that coach and seeing if there were potential rule violations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the buildup to the bout, \u00ad\u00c1lvarez\u2019s head coach, Eddy Reynoso, has been forced to defend himself over comments from \u00c1lvarez\u2019s former promoter Oscar De La Hoya and the Mexican boxing legend Juan Manuel M\u00e1rquez concerning four fighters in the camp failing drug tests.<\/p>\n

Reynoso maintains he has never engaged in doping and is not in charge of his fighters\u2019 nutrition. But he has said he plans to tighten control over his camp, building his own \u00ad\u201cnutrition team\u201d<\/a> that will \u00adcommunicate \u00adregularly with anti-doping officials, to avoid more inadvertent doping cases arising.<\/p>\n

Reynoso has also said: \u201cI support drug testing and clean boxing, and I hope that everyone I work with shares the same values.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February 2018, \u00c1lvarez twice tested positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol before his second fight with Gennady Golovkin.<\/p>\n

The Nevada State Athletic \u00adCommission suspended \u00c1lvarez for six months, but accepted that the source of his two failed drug tests was \u00adcontaminated meat he had eaten in\u00a0Mexico.<\/p>\n

The World Boxing<\/a> Council, one of the major governing bodies in the sport, run by the Mexican \u00adMauricio Sulaim\u00e1n, publicly supported \u00ad\u00c1lvarez. \u201cI give the benefit of the doubt to Canelo. He has never previously tested positive for anything and he\u2019s been in the Clean Boxing Program for many years. He has our absolute vote of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez has said<\/a>: \u201cI have always been a clean fighter and I always will be a clean fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans in Las Vegas for \u00c1lvarez v Crawford, being marketed as a \u2018once in a lifetime event\u2019. Photograph: Candice Ward\/Getty Images for Netflix<\/p>\n

During Arreola\u2019s time away from \u201cTeam Canelo\u201d, between 2019 and 2023, two members of the camp, both coached by Reynoso, failed drug tests.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the former flyweight world champion Julio Cesar Mart\u00ednez failed a doping test for clenbuterol, like \u00c1lvarez, but avoided suspension after authorities accepted that he had also consumed contaminated meat in Mexico. Last year, Mart\u00ednez was banned for nine months after failing another drug test.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the two-time world \u00adchampion \u00d3scar Valdez tested positive for the stimulant phentermine, but he avoided a suspension after it was accepted that he had consumed herbal tea containing the drug.<\/p>\n

Last May, shortly after joining \u201cTeam Canelo\u201d, the former world champion Jaime Mungu\u00eda tested positive for testosterone. He was cleared last week by the relevant commissions, which said the result was caused by contaminated dietary supplements. Arreola says he has never worked with Mungu\u00eda.<\/p>\n

Crawford\u2019s nutritional adviser, Victor Conte, who was jailed <\/a>for his part in the Balco doping scandal that brought down the multiple Olympic champion Marion Jones and has since become an anti-doping advocate, has appealed for \u00c1lvarez to publish his drug test results in the buildup to the fight, while proclaiming his \u00adclient is\u00a0clean.<\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez and Reynoso did not reply to requests for comment about \u00adArreola\u2019s Radical Nutrition business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A trainer who is working with Canelo \u00c1lvarez advertised \u00adperformance-enhancing drugs for sale, including human growth \u00adhormone, before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-417020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115188306019298957","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}