Dana White spoke to the media today as part of the usual pre-fight media scrum after the UFC 173 pre-fight press conference. The conversation would eventually turn from this Saturday’s event to Vitor Belfort and his current situation.
White would give some insight when asked how Vitor is doing, “I’m telling you, the whole Vitor thing… You guys know, Vitor drives me nuts. But, Vitor has gotten a bad rap on this whole thing. He’s gotten a bad rap.”
White would then be asked if Vitor’s “bad rap” can be explained via his being somewhat secretive. “He’s not though, I mean, he’s not. I mean, when he showed up in Nevada, the thing that was bad about that is, he showed up and they’re like, ‘You’re on testosterone?’ ‘Yeah, I’m on testosterone. I mean everybody knew it.’ ‘You shouldn’t have come to Nevada until you were off it.'” White continued, “Just, it… I’m so glad TRT is gone. It’s just so much better for the sport.”
White would continue, claiming that the February drug test administered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission doesn’t actually matter, “Absolutely, it’s absolutely irrelevant, because I’m telling you right now, we tested the shit out of him before every fight he fought. I told you guys, I don’t remember at what point it was, I said ‘Believe me, we’re gonna put him through the ringer with the TRT thing.’ And we did.”
White’s defense continued, “he complied to everything he was asked to do. He was tested, he was always within his limits. Vitor Belfort was never cheating. But, then it became a thing where TRT was looked at, you know, when you looked at Vitor and how he fought and how he looked and everything else. There’s no doubt about it that TRT… I mean that’s what the stuff is designed to do. Stuff is designed to make a guy my age work like a guy Jon Jones’ age. That’s what TRT is for. And it worked, it definitely worked for Vitor.”
White confused the issue a bit, responding to inquiries of if Vitor was over the allowable testosterone limit when tested in February, “he wasn’t, that’s my point. The thing is with Vitor Belfort is he was never over his limits when he fought.”
When asked to clarify if that includes the test in Nevada, “That I don’t know. But, the point is… Here’s the thing: Lets say he came in to Nevada and his levels were off the charts. He wasn’t fighting. Came in here to talk about getting licensed and the thing was, ‘Welcome to Nevada. You wanna be licensed here, you have to stop taking TRT.’ As a guy who’s not fighting, you can go around, do whatever the hell you want with TRT.”
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