A comprehensive drug testing policy the UFC implemented this past year was a watershed moment for drug-free MMA.
And with the UFC tasking the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to oversee the program, it showed the industry-leading promotion was serious about the job.
And yet, 11 months after the program was implemented, it’s apparent there’s still plenty of work to do. Despite a comprehensive push for education from USADA regulators, UFC athletes continue to test positive for banned substances. A returning legend has been ensnared by the new policy. And recently, two fighters have cut deals with the third-party testing firm after failed drug tests were attributed to tainted supplements.
So is USADA on the right track? Is the third-party firm doing enough to make sure UFC fighters know what they should and shouldn’t do in this new age of drug testing?
“I would use the adage, you can take someone to the river, but you can’t make them drink,” said “The Ultimate Fighter Nations” winner Elias Theodorou (11-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC), who weighed in on the question during a recent media visit to Tristar gym in Toronto. “They gave us all the literature on what the dos and don’ts (are), but you’ve just got to, pardon my French, (expletive) read it.”
In other words, education is a little bit more complicated than handing people a flyer and telling them to study up. Learning takes time and face-to-face interaction, and that’s a challenging task for USADA, especially when it’s tasked with keeping tabs on 500 athletes on the promotion’s roster and conducting results management for ongoing cases within the UFC and other sports.
“They’ve come here to answer any questions we had,” Tristar head coach Firas Zahabi told MMAjunkie. “They gave us the talk. For me, they did enough. Are mistakes going to happen? Of course, mistakes are going to happen, because you can sit down and tell somebody the rules a thousand times, but we’re also doing a thousand things in a day.”
Getting a fighter to stop and think about what’s in a supplement – before ingesting it – is a difficult challenge for any regulator, not just those overseeing UFC fighters. Maybe that’s why the promotion’s executives predicted things would get worse before they got better when announcing the program. Drug failures over the past 11 months certainly attest to that.
For some at the center of the UFC’s anti-doping efforts, though, not much has changed. Onetime welterweight title challenger Rory MacDonald (18-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC), who faces Stephen Thompson (12-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) in the FOX Sports 1-televised headliner of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 89 event at The Arena at TD Place in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, takes protein and amino-acid supplements and works hard in the gym. Anything beyond that, he doesn’t give too much consideration.
“I just come in here and train, drink a lot of water and eat my food,” MacDonald said. “I don’t really mess around with IVs out of camp, so I don’t really have to be worried about a lot of the things. But I’m pretty clear on it. I guess it’s a new thing, so a lot of people are adjusting to the protocol. So I guess it’s to be expected that there’s some confusion.”
Check out the above video to get other fighters’ thoughts on the UFC’s USADA program to date.
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