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By: Rich Bergeron
Hearing Zuffa would be abandoning a planned random drug testing protocol for all fighters under contract with the company was strange enough without the recent news about Jon Jones testing positive for cocaine metabolites in early December of last year. After all, this was a smart, sensible and well-constructed testing program that's now being cut short, and snagging Jones should be a reason why it's more important to follow through with the program rather than ending it. Additionally, all the company brass seemed doggedly committed to carrying the program out, especially in light of statements made by Georges St. Pierre when he walked away from the promotion and the sport of MMA itself.
Instead of doing the right thing, though, the UFC will reportedly now provide funds to athletic commissions instead, expecting those agencies to accomplish all future testing of UFC fighters.
The initial message sent by announcing this monumental random testing program was crystal clear in terms of where the UFC wanted to go. No fighter would be able to escape the new testing regimen as it was first presented. Consider Lorenzo Fertitta's own bold comments on the issue (which he offered in the immediate wake of Cung Le's false-positive test):
"Actually it's becoming less of a problem. We've stepped up our game testing. For the athletes, there's nowhere else to hide. Now, we're testing all guys on a card. It used to be random testing for a few guys on the card. The next step is to random test all 500 athletes, several times a year. We're sending a message: if you're cheating, you'll get caught, suspended and fined. We want the sport to be clean."Apparently, Fertitta was not really willing to put his money where his mouth was on the testing front. He also neglected to mention that if a top-level UFC athlete tested positive for traces of an illegal street drug, there would be more than one place to hide. For Jones, the first place would be a drug treatment program he voluntarily checked himself into. Next, Jones could count on his Zuffa bosses to let him hide behind the coat-tails of the organization itself. Dana White even offered his support, assuring UFC fans that the champion would fight this drug addiction just as efficiently as he fights his opponents in the cage.
Jones is the purest definition of a "company man" who is in some ways bigger than the promotion itself, but not quite untouchable enough to be immune from being told what to do and when to do it. Whenever a major sponsor comes along that wants to get involved with the UFC, the company usually calls on Jones to sign one of the first blockbuster deals with that sponsor. He's even been sponsored by the promotion itself. Of course, he can say no to the brass, but in most cases he has every reason to give in and be the face of the organization when they ask him to be. This very kind of favoritism and unflinching, look-the-other-way support that their poster boy is getting right now is just what Jones expects in return for artfully toeing the company line. So, that's exactly what he's getting.
So far there's been no talk of a suspension of Jones from the UFC, despite countless other cases of fighters who had much less significant incidents result in much harsher punishment. Still, the Nevada State Athletic Commission is not ruling out potential punishment for the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. The lack of consequences for Jones is not as important, however, as the message sent to all UFC fighters about cocaine use in general:
If there really is no formal penalty for ingesting "nose candy," isn't publicizing that reality bound to lead to more fighters consuming the drug instead of other alternatives or traditional PEDS? So, now there has to be a great case for making some anti-cocaine legislation, new company policy, or some other prohibitive measure to adequately address and curtail cocaine use by fighters. Even then, Jon Jones will be exempt from whatever punishment might result from any adjustment of the status quo.
The reality is that White's explanations about getting out of the random testing business because of Cung Le's false positive test for HGH doesn't hold water when matched up with the actual circumstances involved with Cung Le's testing. First of all, Le's testing issues came from day-of-fight tests. The UFC did not order these tests as part of any traditional "random" or "out of competition" testing protocol. The Cung Le testing issue arose from a situation that confronts the UFC whenever they put on a show in a location where there is no commission that oversees mixed martial arts competition. All those cases call for the UFC itself to get the testing accomplished. So, to now say the commissions are going to do all the testing is disingenuous to say the least. No commission was involved with Cung Le's botched tests, and none will be involved in any testing if another fight card comes to Macau or any other no-commission locale.
In fact, it is a long-standing, official UFC policy to hire out local labs to test all fighters appearing on overseas cards. Former NSAC Chairman Mark Ratner, now a UFC executive, even went as far as announcing the promotion would refuse to pay out fight bonuses until all results from that testing came in.
This is especially interesting since Jon Jones received a Fight of the Night bonus for his recent win over Daniel Cormier, even though UFC officials obviously knew beforehand about the cocaine test.
Another frightening aspect involved in this scenario is the fact that White promised future tests will be faulty if the UFC continues to handle them. “Our legal team completely screwed that thing up,” White said about Le's false positive. "We have no business doing drug testing. We f----d it up, and we will f--k it up again. That’s what the commission is there to do.” (Editor's Note: Wait a second, is the commission there to test, or to f--k up the test?)
All lawyers of fighters who were once (or might soon be) bagged in the UFC's overseas testing for banned substances, please take notice of this monumental admission from "The Baldfather." It may be your ticket to an easy payday for you and your client.
It is very disappointing to see so many articles on the subject of the UFC abandoning their random testing plans without anyone bothering to point out that Cung Le's problems were not even the result of a random test. It just so happens that the announcement on the killing of the program came just before the year's first Pay-Per-View card for the UFC, which involved a fighter caught up in a real case of random testing. The decision to scrap random testing also came in the wake of multiple stories pointing out the UFC's revenue struggles in 2014, mainly due to fighters pulling out of huge bouts due to injuries. While the losses from cancelled or postponed fights might not be back-breaking for the world's most powerful MMA promotion, it's still concerning for everyone invested in the company. This is an organization run by people who now fully realize that calling off and/or rescheduling fights is bad for business, period.
If more top-level fighters were to be caught up in random testing snags, that could create more financial instability. Some of these tests could create even more damaging cancellations and more rescheduling, losing the UFC way more money than they would miss out on by looking the other way.
It's bad enough that the mainstream MMA media continues to maintain their UFC lapdog status by failing to point out the reality behind the Cung Le situation, but what's worse is they don't even call into question Dana White blaming everything on the UFC legal team. Really? Why does the legal team have anything to do with arranging drug testing? It makes more sense to have a guy like Ratner in charge of those kind of issues with the legal team just checking off on it. Even before Le joined a class action lawsuit against the UFC, stories surfaced to reveal that the UFC did not even bother to employ a lab that was approved by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for the testing of fighters appearing on the Macau card.
The Jones debacle obviously proves beyond any reasonable doubt that random drug testing IS WORKING and should continue if the UFC really does want to promote a "clean" sport. Unfortunately, the mere fact that Jones was tested for a substance that is not banned out of competition is being called an "administrative oversight" by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. So, it's not so much the story that Jones messed up here. It's really the athletic commission's fault for going above and beyond the call of duty.
To borrow a phrase from ESPN Monday Night Football: "C'mon, Man!" If it's really about making the sport better and the well-being of the athletes involved in combat sports, "banned" and "illegal" should be considered to be one and the same in this situation. Instead, this is being viewed as a fluke, and UFC fighters are now finding out that a little coke is not only permitted out of competition, but it's also not even supposed to be something commissions can test you for.
This is pure, unadulterated irony, because now it's a thousand times more urgent for the UFC to implement their own independent, random testing program. It's only natural that the company should want to prevent their stars from using and abusing illegal drugs. Giving Jones a free pass only encourages recreational cocaine use, and calling the fact that he was even tested an oversight is as good as apologizing to a person who purposely victimized himself.
The Jones case also proves that Dana White is lying through his teeth about Cung Le's false positive being the true impetus behind the decision to dump random drug testing. "Uncle Dana" claims to be a phenomenal poker player, but he can't bluff his way out of this mess.
Giving a little extra money to the commissions to complete the testing the company should get done on their own is a cop out, plain and simple. It's also another case of CYA in action, and it only has to go down this way because the UFC President is getting sick of announcing changes to fight cards. It has absolutely nothing to do with Cung Le.
Leaving all testing to "the regulators" also means that only those fighters slated to appear on a particular card will be subject to testing. Even if every fighter to appear on every future card were to be tested, what happens between fights? Fighters commonly use PEDs as a method to recover more quickly from injuries. Even in cases where a fighter is using banned substances just to gain an unfair advantage in training, most of the time the user knows exactly when to taper off in time to avoid getting busted by a local commission. Some camps might even employ doctors or medical technicians to advise them on the best protocol to follow in order to avoid detection. Therefore, the best way to catch users is to test them when they least expect it, when there is no fight coming up.
The only sensible way to do this testing is exactly how Lorenzo Fertitta said it should and would be done: for all the fighters under contract with the promotion, multiple times per year. Any other approach just affirms that the UFC is not interested at all in providing a cleaner competitive environment. If getting there translates to the potential of more drastic alterations to future fight cards and more lost revenue, it's not happening. And it's all Cung Le's fault.
