UFC drug czar ramping up testing
UFC drug czar has TRIPLED STEROID TESTING since last year
Gentlemen, start your peeing. Gentlewomen, too.
UFC vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky spoke recently with Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting at the 2016 Association of Boxing Commissions annual convention. The UFC’s drug czar revealed that the PED testing program, begun in July of 2015, only just implemented completely last month
Last year saw 150-250 tests per quarter last year. That ramped up to around 450-550 tests per quarter. The third quarter of 2016, USADA, the UFC’s independent drug testing agency, will test around 700 fighters.
“We’re very happy with where the program is, considering we started from scratch,” said Novitzky. “I’m amazed the progress that we’ve had getting this off the ground. This will be the first quarter — the third quarter of 2016 — where we have a fully implemented program.”
UFC 200 was to be the biggest PPV card in the sport’s history. Just days before the event, UFC interim light heavyweight champion Jon Jones tested positive for anti-estrogen metabolites, and was pulled from the card. Days after the event, tests results administered before fight night to former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar came back positive.
Both men face two-year suspensions for the first failure.
“Let me be clear, just because this is my program, those days and those occurrences are challenging,” said Novitzky. “I never want to see that happen. I don’t take any pleasure that the program is working, seeing that happen. Sometimes one or two of those needs to happen for everybody to open their eyes. If anybody had any reservations about the seriousness, about the independence of the program, that it doesn’t matter if you’re the first on the depth chart of the roster or the last you’re going to be treated the same under this program.”
Novitzky also said he had spoke with USADA in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the ready, fire, aim Lesnar fiasco, where a test is taken, the fighter fails, but the results return after the event.
“We never want to see that,” said Novitzky. “The whole reason of this program being in place is to prevent things like that from happening, prevent two individuals from getting into an Octagon where one has an unfair advantage. But based on timing, that potentially could be inevitable.”
“A perfectly successful program is where the deterrent is on the front end and they realize how comprehensive it is and they realize what the penalty is going to be if they test positive and say, I’m gonna make the decision not to dope on the front end rather than catching them on the back end. But the reality is sometimes it takes a few of those hard lessons to happen for everybody to get the message that this is real and this isn’t on paper or a theory. This is a real program where you’re seeing the main event of UFC 200 be pulled because of a potential violation.”