Dana White was on Sportsnation with host Michelle Beadle yesterday as part of his day long PR tour of ESPN shows.
While White’s primary goal was to hype up this coming weekend’s UFC 172 event and its main event of Jon Jones vs. Glover Teixeira, Ronda Rousey was sure to come up. Beadle brought up Rousey’s recent quote where she claimed Cris Justino has been on steroids so long that she is now an “it,” a comment which raised many eyebrows and which the UFC has continued to refuse to offer their own comment on.
After calling it an “amazing quote,” Beadle goes on to ask White how concerned he is about PED use in the UFC.
“You know, PEDs have been cleaned up in the UFC,” White claimed. “What people don’t realize is that the rule used to be that when commissions would test the athletes they’d do the main event, and they’d have a couple of random tests. We’ve been testing everyone on the cards.”
White would continue, going on to offer his own evidence that PEDs have been cleaned up, “It has been a long time since someone has tested positive for something in the UFC. The TRT thing was a nightmare for me, I’m glad the athletic commission got rid of it.”
There are, of course, plenty of issues with these statements. Dennis Siver tested positive for hCG, a common substance that would be used while cycling off of anabolic steroids at UFC 168. The time it took between the event and the test coming to light suggests that there could be others that haven’t had their tests returned.
But, the bigger issue is the continued suggestion that the testing that these fighters go through from the commissions is not going to catch much for PED use. It would take an actual thorough urine and blood testing program to really start moving toward PEDs being out of the UFC, and even in that case it’s still a battle between testing technology and the technology in the PED field.
Lorenzo Fertitta has, of course, claimed that the UFC is willing to pay for any sort of testing a commission could want to conduct, including the very important Carbon Isotope Ratio test, but we’re not seeing it actually happen. And, the UFC’s attempts to squash programs like this in the past make me doubt we ever will see it.
It would be interesting to see a fighter actually go public and state that they want a full testing program for a fight and ask the UFC to follow through on the offer to pay for it through a commission. Would the UFC actually do it? Would the commission actually run a thorough program? Or is it all just for show?
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