For 12 rounds at Birmingham\u2019s BP Pulse Arena, hometown hero and Olympic champion Yafai was battered around the ring by his Mexican opponent.<\/p>\n
By the end of the eighth round, it felt like the fight had been going on for eight years. In nearly two decades covering boxing, rarely has this reporter felt so uncomfortable sitting at ringside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Frankly, you just wanted it to stop. You couldn\u2019t understand why those in Yafai\u2019s corner didn\u2019t pull him out when any chance of a victory was long lost. You wondered what the long-term effects of this beating – there really is no other word which feels appropriate – might be, both for Yafai\u2019s future career and most importantly of all, his health.<\/p>\n
At the same time, you marvelled at Rodriguez\u2019s relentlessness as he ripped the WBC interim title away from the home fighter\u2019s grasp. Statistics later showed the 32-year-old had thrown more than 1,000 \u201cpower\u201d punches, twice as many as his opponent, landing more than half. In the 12th round, he looked just as sharp as he had in the first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How on earth had he managed it, you asked? It took only a few more weeks to learn.<\/p>\n
On July 9, it was announced Rodriguez had returned an adverse finding for the heart drug heptaminol, a banned substance, in a post-fight test conducted by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (Vada).<\/p>\n
Barely a fortnight later, on July 26, the WBC published its ruling, claiming that after an investigation which included a series of behind-closed doors meetings with Rodriguez and his team, it had determined the fighter\u2019s ingestion of the substance was \u201cnon-intentional\u201d and caused by taking an over-the-counter energy booster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 12 rounds at Birmingham\u2019s BP Pulse Arena, hometown hero and Olympic champion Yafai was battered around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,588,85,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-39465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}