British boxer Lawrence Okolie has failed a doping test and his heavyweight fight against Tony Yoka this weekend will not go ahead.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old had been scheduled to take on Frenchman Yoka, a 2016 Olympic champion, in Paris on Saturday, 25 April.<\/p>\n
Fight promoter Queensberry said it was told on Monday night by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (Vada) that Okolie “returned an adverse finding following an anti-doping test conducted ahead of the show in Paris this Saturday”.<\/p>\n
The fight night has been cancelled following Okolie’s removal from the headline bout, with Queensberry citing “circumstances outside of our control”.<\/p>\n
Former world champion Okolie earlier said that he hoped “sense prevails” as he explained the failed test came after treatment for an injury.<\/p>\n
“Before anyone starts imagining the worst, following my bicep injury last year, I sustained an elbow injury on the same arm during this camp,” Okolie said in a statement posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“I had a treatment on it and now we are here. I truly hope sense prevails.<\/p>\n
“I will of course be fully co-operating with all relevant authorities and I’m confident any investigation will clear my name.”<\/p>\n
Okolie won a world title at cruiserweight before moving up to heavyweight in 2024.<\/p>\n
He is undefeated in three heavyweight fights and stopped Ebenezer Tetteh last December in his most recent outing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British boxer Lawrence Okolie has failed a doping test and his heavyweight fight against Tony Yoka this weekend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543166","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","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}