With his B sample coming back positive as well, there is no way around it. Luis Nery has now officially failed his drug tests from his career defining dethroning of Japanese legend Shinsuke Yamanaka. The WBC will rule on what to do about this later in the week.
On August 18th, Mexico’s Luis Nery (24-0, 18 KOs) put on a career altering performance against long time bantamweight king Shinsuke Yamanaka (27-1-2, 19 KOs), blowing out the legend in only four rounds. At this time this win launched the 22 year old Mexican into stardom, but shortly after it came out that his initial drug test sample tested positive for zilpaterol.
Now that his secondary sample has tested the same, the WBC is all but guaranteed to strip him of the belt and the Japanese commission will likely change the result to a no contest. The WBC may also return the belt to Yamanaka, but it is equally possible that he may retire given the beating he took on the way to being stopped last month. If so, the title will be temporarily rendered vacant.
Zilpaterol is commonly used to increase the size of cow’s in Mexico, so of course Nery’s team is going with the tainted beef defense. I do not pretend to be an expert on how much beef would need to be eaten to trigger a positive, but I will say it is disappointing that this is even a possibility. Theoretically taking it as a PED would increase stamina.
