Weidman: PED users should be banned for life

Former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and blasted his UFC 205 opponent Yoel Romero for failing at PED test. Romero argued that the drugs were taken inadvertently when he ingested a tainted supplement. USADA found those circumstances to be extenuating, and suspended Romero for only six months, beginning on the date of the infraction. Given that Romero fights on average twice a year, the suspension is effectively nothing.

“To be honest with you, I think once you put PEDs in your system you should be suspended forever,” said Weidman, as transcribed by Adam Guillen Jr. for MMA Mania. “And now you have this whole thing that it was tainted supplements, which honestly I’m not sold on it. It feels like every time somebody fails a drug test the first thing they go to is, ‘Oh, I was taking this and it was tainted.’

“It doesn’t take too much time to say, ‘I failed for testosterone, or whatever, and let me find a supplement inside GNC that people might feel is not a big deal to take to make them be a little more lenient with their sentence on me.’ Then when you bring it up, it’s ‘I took a tainted supplement.’ I am not sold on that there really are tainted supplements out there.

“I feel if you’ve been taking legit stuff like protein and creatine and it’s not from some weird thing that says testosterone booster, then I don’t believe you are failing drug tests. I feel like people are crapping their pants now because every time that someone fails a drug test, they say it was due to a tainted supplement and now everyone’s afraid to take supplements. I don’t even think that’s real.”

“It’s personal because the guy is a gifted athlete, he just failed for steroids and this is the biggest fight of my life. I’m fighting at Madison Square Garden and I feel like I will probably get the title fight if I go out there and do my thing the way I feel I should. This is a huge fight, I have no emotional connection, but I don’t like it when people take steroids and cheat, especially when you walk into the cage, it really pisses me off. Then you have all these excuses and people start feeling sorry for you, I don’t buy it.

“I go crazy with these guys taking steroids, but I was in the sport pre-USADA and I was naive that these guys weren’t taking steroids and now all of these guys are getting caught for it. At the end of the day, I was fighting guys on steroids even before this and own guys who are just getting caught for it.”

(1:52:40 mark)

Chris Weidman fights Yoel Romero at UFC 205 on November 12, 2016, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. Romero is on the division’s longest streak, at seven, most recently beating Tim Kennedy via punches in the fight of the night, Lyoto Machida via an elbow in a performance of the night, and a controversial split decision over Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza at UFC 194 on December 12, 2015.

A further potential impediment to a title shot is Jacare vs. Luke Rockhold at UFC Fight Night 101 on Nov. 26, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia. If the winner of that one looks more spectacular than does the winner of Weidman vs. Romero, then the title shot could go there.