Ben Rothwell: USADA ‘burns us at the stake’

Ben Rothwell rematches Andrei Arlovski on Saturday at UFC on ESPN 4 in San Antonio, Texas. He’s coming off losses to Junior dos Santos and Blagoy Ivanov; those fights were 35 months apart. In an interview with the TSN MMA Show, as transcribed by Ken Rodney for TSN, Rothwell describes a dark and harrowing three years.

I was going through medical problems, I was being treated by doctors and USADA didn’t agree with the treatments and for 15 months we fought, said Rothwell. I had two board-certified endocrinologists, I had a Wisconsin State Athletic Commission doctor all fighting with USADA about my medical condition. The first TUE, they came back, the doctors rebutted everything and USADA came up with a whole other set of reasons of what was wrong and they rebutted those too and they just said ‘you know what, this is how it is and if you want to go to arbitration, we’re going to give you a four-year suspension.

In a particularly egregious move, USADA would not make clear that the issue was over treatment from his physician, rather than injecting Deca into his butt cheek. 

“They don’t care about that, they don’t care about anything, they just smash guys when they can, burn us at the stake as Josh Barnett said, said Rothwell. That’s why for Josh Barnett to step up and do what he did and win in arbitration, it was a really big thing, but the timing was really bad because I would’ve gone to arbitration a month later and I knew they weren’t going to let that happen again. Everything was just kind of against me and I just said, I’m going to get through this. I don’t get happy about much, but I’m happy to be fighting again.

The whole thing was a mental health issue and just to not get any help and not be allowed to get any help. I mean therapists were writing to USADA saying it’s unethical for us to treat him when he has a physical condition and they would just send emails back, no phone calls. It was pretty brutal, a pretty brutal time.

Barnett had the courage and financial resources to go through the arbitration process, and ultimately received no punishment. The fighter said his gym, Rothwell Mixed Martial Arts in Kenosha, Wisconsin helped get through the worst of it.

Getting through the last three years was only because of that gym, said Rothwell. All the great people that come there and the lives that we’ve been able to affect and change, the kids that we’ve helped. It’s a pretty amazing place, it’s got my name on it, but I would call it something else if I could so that everyone knew it was there because of them and that’s what makes it such an awesome place.

And now ‘Big Ben’ is back at work, fighting Arlovski 11 years after a KO loss at Affliction: Banned.

I’m a completely different fighter, said Rothwell. I was a boy when he fought me the first time and I feel like now I’ve come into my own. Even with my layoff from my last fight, I’m still trying to figure things out, I can honestly say I feel better than I ever have before. … every time we’re outside fighting, he’s a super cool guy and this is just two mixed martial artists that have to go out and put on a great show and show the world what the heavyweights can do.

Rothwell has also showed the world that USADA is failing.