Another day, another Vitor Belfort controversy. Quite the stir was caused after “The Phenom” was pulled from a scheduled appearance on Monday’s MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani. According to Ariel, Belfort’s wife, who is also his manager, submitted a request not to have any questions surrounding the investigation pieces on his sketchy drug test results from September 2012, just a few weeks out from his late-notice 205 lbs title fight vs. Jon Jones at UFC 152. When Helwani told her he couldn’t do that, she made the call to get him off the show. Belfort has yet to address these results, while the UFC’s Dave Sholler only offered up a brief statement addressing accusations of the UFC “covering up” the results to keep Belfort vs. Jones intact.
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One person who has been highly critical of Vitor’s steroid past, TRT usage, and elevated testosterone levels is UFC middleweight Luke Rockhold, who spoke to Bloody Elbow’s Three Amigos Podcast on Monday.
“The guy’s living a lie and he’s trying to cover it up the best he can,” Rockhold said. “Ariel’s a solid reporter, he’s going to ask the hard questions and stick to his morals of the game. Good for Ariel for not adjusting to his schedule.”
As far as the actual investigation itself, Rockhold isn’t surprised by the findings at all.
“Not that I didn’t already know, it wasn’t a surprise. He’s juiced to the gills, the guy pumps up to 205 and looks bigger than everyone out there. No one carries weight like that and transforms themselves. Vitor has been dirty his whole career. There’s everybody else and then there’s Vitor. It’s a matter of how much he’s cheating, not if. There’s a lot of guys that cheat, and then there’s Vitor. It’s just another level, he’s just on everything you could possibly imagine, and it’s been that way since he was 19 years old.”
Rockhold, who fights middleweight champion Chris Weidman in the UFC 194 co-main event, also “doesn’t understand how Vitor is fighting in Brazil,” even acknowledging the UFC’s new drug testing policies.
We will have much more from our interview with Luke Rockhold published on Wednesday’s edition of the Three Amigos Podcast.
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