Founder responds to Nova Uniao PED speculation
Andre Pederneiras: “I think people are butthurt at a team that remained in Brazil, kept training and kept picking up poor people and turning them into champions.”
Nova Uniao is one of the greatest teams in the history of mixed martial arts. It is the work of Andre Pederneiras, who went to Holland to learn Dutch kickboxing, combined it with his world class Jiu-Jitsu skills, and then offered it to all classes of society in Brazil, including the very poor.
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However, there has been mean spirited speculation that losses by team members Jose Aldo, RenanBarao, JussierFormiga?, and Thales Leites, all of which came after the UFC instituted random, comprehensive, out of competition PED testing, indicate that Nova Uniao was more involved in doping than other teams.
Pederneiras bitterly responded.
“I think people are butthurt at a team that remained in Brazil, kept training and kept picking up poor people and turning them into champions,” said Pederneiras to Portal do Vale Tudo, as translated by Lucas Rezende for BE. “It hurts them too much, because they were brought up at high level gyms since they were children and now they are losing to Brazilians who had nothing to do with that.”
“Who do you think has more athletes capable of winning an Olympic medal, Brazil or USA? Which one you think has more laboratories that can create substances that can’t be detected in antidoping tests? That’s my answer to those people.”
“They accuse me of something they have much more knowledge about than I do. They have so many Olympic champions, we have a few. If we had access to that, it would be some old procedure to a country that has been winning medals in so many sports for a long time.”
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