Angela Hill gets USADA exemption fights Jessica Andrade on Feb. 4

All UFC fighters are subject to random, comprehensive anti-doping testing. That is of course no longer the case when a fighter is released. However, if a fighter returns to the league, he or she is ordinarily subject to a four month testing period to make certain nothing untoward transpired during the untested period.

That provision can be broken, however, and it was for strawweight Angela Hill. Overkill will fight the #5 ranked contender Jessica Andrade at UFC Fight Night 104 in Houston, Texas, on Saturday, February 4, 2017.

The UFC explains, via a statement on their website.

On December 13, 2016, UFC strawweight Angela Hill was re-enrolled by USADA into the UFC Anti-Doping Policy Registered Testing Pool (RTP). Hill had previously been part of the RTP as a contracted athlete in 2015, before she was released at the discretion of UFC and subsequently removed from the program. UFC is granting Hill an exemption to the four-month RTP requirement, which will allow her to compete against Jessica Andrade on February 4, 2017, in Houston, Texas.

Under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy section 5.7.1, in exceptional circumstances or where the strict application of that rule would be manifestly unfair to an athlete, UFC can grant a waiver to the four-month requirement. UFC determined that Hill met that criteria for the following reasons:
•Hill underwent a thorough education process on the UFC Anti-Doping Policy upon her first inclusion in the RTP in 2015.
•Upon her re-enrollment into the RTP on December 13, 2016, Hill received additional education and became immediately subject to no advance notice, out-of-competition testing by USADA, making her subject to such testing for more than 7 weeks before her competition. Since Hill has returned to the RTP, she has undergone unannounced testing by USADA, and will continue to be subject to such testing while she remains in the RTP.
•It was not at Hill’s discretion that she was removed from the RTP in 2015. The intent of the 4-month rule is to prevent athletes from unfairly manipulating their inclusion in the RTP.
•UFC and USADA are in the final stages of refining the UFC Anti-Doping Policy. Included in that refinement, will be a change to the 4-month rule, whereby only athletes who chose at their discretion to be removed from the RTP will be required to have an extended presence in the RTP before returning to competition.

Hill announced the fight via her social network.

I'm back bitches. #UFCHouston pic.twitter.com/mZ3RcpUB87

— Angela Hill (@AngieOverkill) January 17, 2017

“>January 17, 2017

Hill was released by the UFC in 2015. She moved to Invicta where she went 4-0 and won the atomweight championship.

Looking at the image above, it is not Hill that there could potentially be doping concerns around – it looks like a UFC media department staffer photoshoped a ripped Mark Hunt in there. This is not an accusation. Andrade has never failed a PED test. She works ferociously hard and it shows. And UFC VP of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitzky says one of the tools he uses is a “smell test.”

“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,” said the drug czar to Joe Rogan in 2015. This is strictly another tool to be used. 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.’

Searching the USADA database reveals Andrade has been tested four times, and passed every time.