Evander Holyfield is countering the accusation leaked two weeks ago that he purchased performance enhancing drugs, asserting that he’s “no cheater” in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Real Deal told the paper on Tuesday that he took a drug in 2004 “that was supposed to help with my hormonal problem,” but discontinued usage quickly because he felt no benefit from it. Holyfield said he took a substance “two or three times,” prescribed to combat fatigue, which he said he’d battled since contracting hepatitis A in 1995.

Holyfield maintains that in 2000, a Texas physician said his tiredness could be treated.

“I would get tired for no reason at all,” he said to the paper. “I was tired for the whole day. I’d even sleep, then I’d get up and it felt like I hadn’t gotten any rest at all. Sometimes my energy would just go up and down for no reason. They said part of it might have been when I had the hepatitis A, which attacks the liver, and the stress.”

Holyfield stated that in 2004 “somebody recommended” he did obtain a substance to combat the fatigue, and he received a prescription from a Georgia doctor. “A doctor there prescribed something, but I don’t know what it was. Hormonal something,” he said to the paper. “All I know is it didn’t do anything so I stopped taking it. I only took it two or three times over the summer. They said, ‘Just keep taking it.’ I said, ‘Why, it’s not doing anything?’ I lost to Larry Donald [in November].”

Holyfield says the drug was okayed by Dr. Christopher Vaughns, then his personal physician. Vaughns died in 2005.

“I told my doctor it didn’t help, and they said, ‘Then don’t use it any more,’ ” he said. “I still felt sluggish.”

The boxer said that he did consider taking, which weren’t a banned substance in the sport, in 1988.

“Somebody high up in boxing mentioned to me that there was this other fighter who did steroids and I should too because it wasn’t illegal in boxing yet,” he said to the AJC. “I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I ain’t no cheater.’ I was the undisputed cruiserweight champion and I was in the Olympics. If I started taking steroids, people would say, ‘He cheated at everything.’ But this guy told me, ‘Well, [Mike] Tyson is doing it, you should, too. I said, ‘I don’t care if Tyson is doing it, I’m not.’ ”

One of his former trainers, the boxer admitted, used steroids. How did he know this?

“His personality went back and forth. Sometimes he was normal. Sometimes he was aggressive. Another thing I noticed is that he smelled bad. A lot of times people who take steroids have this odor.”

This story, sad to say, has an odor about it. And there will be a lingering stench until the prosectors in Albany County, NY who leaked information about the investigation, move forward and share more information. Remember, though, the lynchpin of our jurisprudence system–innocent until proven guilty…