PARIS, France – As is often the case with these things, it didn’t take long for heavyweight Lawrence Okolie to follow news of an adverse finding in a performance-enhancing drug test with a social media post.
In fact, within just an hour of us learning that his WBC heavyweight title eliminator against Tony Yoka this Saturday was in danger of being cancelled due to a positive test, Okolie had jumped on Instagram to explain himself.
In his statement, posted Tuesday morning, the 33-year-old said: “Before anyone starts imagining the worst, following my bicep injury last year, I sustained an elbow injury on the same arm during this camp. I had a treatment on it and now we are here. I truly hope sense prevails.
“I will of course be fully cooperating with all relevant authorities and I’m confident any investigation will clear my name.
“I won’t be making any further comment at this time. Thank you for all your support and see you soon.”
As one might expect, Okolie said all the right things, even including an image of his injured arm in the post. He also said the right amount – just enough, but not too much. It is, after all, not the job of the fighter to now sort this situation out and decipher both (a) how it happened and (b) how it should be resolved.
That decision could rest with the World Boxing Council (WBC), a sanctioning body whose history of resolution in such cases is, like the sport itself, somewhat erratic. In the past, they have on occasion been sympathetic towards boxers who have blamed a positive test on contamination, or ingesting a banned substance through a supplement, and as a result plenty of boxers have claimed that as a reason for their positive test. Famously, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez used this excuse in 2018, while more recently we have seen Subriel Matias take the same approach to getting his name cleared. Matias, of course, was allowed to proceed with a WBC junior-welterweight title fight against Dalton Smith in January despite having failed a test for ostarine in November, with the amount of ostarine in his system deemed negligible.
However, the good news is that things seemed to have changed on that front, according to the WBC. Last December, at a convention in Bangkok, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman announced some amendments to their Clean Boxing Program designed to prevent boxers from claiming that they unknowingly ingested a banned substance through a supplement or equivalent. He said that following “long and extensive” scientific investigations the WBC had formulated a list of products they know are at risk of contamination and that from February 2026 every boxer enrolled in the Clean Boxing Program – and to be ranked in the top 15 by the WBC, enrolment is mandatory – will be informed of those at-risk supplements. In theory, with this knowledge to hand, there can then be no excuse for a failed test.
Those changes, which came into effect on February 1, could have led to the cancellation of Matias vs. Smith had they arrived a bit sooner. They could also now have a direct impact on the future of Lawrence Okolie, the WBC silver heavyweight beltholder.
“They’re in danger of having an adverse finding [if they take a supplement on the list] and because they were aware of the danger [of taking a supplement containing a banned substance] the case against them is much stronger,” Sulaiman explained to BoxingScene in December. “They will no longer be able to claim that they did not know they could have it [in their system].
“Today [in December] they claim, and rightfully so, that they didn’t know. But now they know this is a potential risk of getting an anti-doping violation.
“All these cases [of positive tests], the boxer discloses what they are taking,” Sulaiman continued. “They are not hiding it. When we do a test, the boxer taking that test will be given a form that asks them to [stipulate] what they are using right now.
“The boxer will then write down all the supplements they are taking. They sign it; they do the test. When there is an adverse finding, we look at that list and we can see that [in many cases] the supplement that we know [can be contaminated] has been listed. He didn’t know. Then we investigate further. But now they can’t claim they didn’t know. It will be much stricter. They can no longer claim they didn’t know.”
Of course, as good as this sounds, the fear is that those supplying will remain ahead of those testing. If, for example, a supplement company finds that their products are now on the WBC’s at-risk list, it surely won’t take much to manufacture a new product that isn’t.
“There will still be issues,” Sulaiman said, before suggesting that new supplements will be examined as they come to market. “Doping is very complicated and each substance is different and the education will be ongoing. This new protocol is key. Every boxer who enrols on the Clean Boxing Program will now know the expectations of them. We will ensure there can be no mistakes made.
“The Program is eight years old; it was perhaps a little dated. This represents a significant improvement.”
