Chris Weidman is among a few fighters that have complained recently that, while the UFC has apparently started a random drug testing process, they aren’t hearing about themselves or fighters they know getting tested yet. To hear UFC’s VP of Athlete Health and Performance, Jeff Novitzky, tell it, that may be because they’re passing the “smell test.” Novitzky recently appeared on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience to go in depth on the UFC’s new drug testing program and Novitzky had a lot to clear up when it came to just how “random,” random drug testing is (transcription via MMAJunkie).
“It’s not random testing; it’s intelligent testing. USADA’s not going to say, ‘Hey, we’re going roll the dice and whoever comes up …’ They’re going to look on everything, from tips that they may get – hell, they’ll even look at physical appearances of athletes. Does this athlete pass kind of the physical appearance ‘smell test,’ and if they don’t, hey, maybe we need to test that person a little bit more.”
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“This is strictly another tool to be used,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that an athlete who doesn’t pass the smell test will test positive, but a lot of times, it does. All is means is a test. It doesn’t mean a person is positive because you look like you did. But hey, maybe an extra test or two.
“If I was that athlete, that freak, I would be like, ‘Hey, test me more, because people are accusing me of it, so it will be cool at the end of the year, everybody will look at my stats on the webpage and I was tested 10 times and no positive tests.'”
So, it should be that some fighters and perhaps especially some camps are going to be getting a lot more testing than others, simply because there’s more outside information to suggests that those athletes are on PEDs. Novitzky suggested that the range will be anything from 10-12 for some fighters and just 2-3 for others. It will be interesting to see, as this partnership moves out of its infancy, if reports of certain athletes being tested more or certain camps of athletes being tested more often do crop up, and how those numbers corroborate or conflict with rumors in and around the MMA community.
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