Ahead of this weekend’s light heavyweight title fight between Artur Beterbiev and Callum Smith, Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn speaks to promoters about his concerns about Beterbiev having an atypical drug test finding with elevated levels of HGH and testosterone.
Hearn says that because the result was an atypical and non-adverse finding, he cannot contractually do anything about it, but will continue to investigate the matter.
Listen to Beterbiev’s drug test
“There was an article published yesterday by Kevin Iole, obviously in conjunction with Top Rank, there was an atypical finding in Artur Beterbiev’s VADA test in December. Elevated levels of HGH and testosterone.
“It is not an adverse finding, an atypical finding, but still high levels that, as a promoter of a fighter in the other corner, are worrying. That’s why we’ve been working with VADA to try to understand the reasons.
“It’s all there for you to investigate and they’ll want us to be careful what we say.”
Whether you received a satisfactory response
“No, not really. There have been additional tests done since then, but not additional ones around those results, just the standard tests that follow. So in this test there was an increase in these substances, and in the tests the following week , there was none. What we want to know is, we are not scientists, we just want to know why those levels were raised and the questions that we have asked VADA we will continue to ask…
“Contractually we cannot do anything about it because it was not an adverse finding, but rather an atypical result of elevated levels of HGH and testosterone in blood and urine.”
