John Morgan of MMAJunkie reports on desire of both Georges St-Pierre and Josh Koscheck to endure Olympic-style drug testing prior to their championship fight tentatively scheduled for December 11th.
At Monday’s “The Ultimate Fighter 12” media day at the UFC Training Center in Las Vegas, opposing coaches Georges St-Pierre (20-2 MMA, 14-2 UFC) and Josh Koscheck (15-4 MMA, 13-4 UFC) both said they think a more stringent program should be in place for their December bout.
St-Pierre said he believes cheaters need to be caught now before performance-enhancing drugs ruin the sport, while Koscheck said from what he’s heard, the champ might need to look in the mirror.
“From what I’ve heard from other fighters in other camps, yeah, [St-Pierre] has done steroids and HGH, possibly,” Koscheck told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I don’t know. This is just on hearsay information that I’ve gotten.
Payout Perspective:
I’m again reminded of an interview with USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart, published some months ago, that broke down why the current testing standards for combat sport athletes are completely inadequate.
Yet, while no one is willing to argue that there isn’t a problem, there remains a very serious question as to whether wide-scale Olympic-style drug testing is financially and logistically feasible at this point in time. Think about how much would it cost to test an entire card taking into consideration the following:
- 20-24 fighters
- 2-3 months
- Multiple trips to visit each fighter (spread throughout North America and some across the globe)
- Laboratory costs that include not just urine, but also sophisticated blood work
Perhaps the UFC can afford to support this effort, but it would certainly be difficult for lower-tier organizations to follow suit. I also wonder how that sort of double standard might be crafted under commission regulations.
Then again, maybe the sport doesn’t need full drug testing: the point of testing is to deter the majority, not test every single competitor to completely remove all doubt. I could envision an effective program that mandates truly random, full-scale drug testing – a program that checks for everything – but doesn’t guarantee the frequency of commission visits or even that a particular fighter will be tested at all until fight night. The mere threat of the unforeseen visit would likely be enough to deter PED use, and those that took a chance would eventually be caught (their examples to serve as further deterrents).
It’s a system that probably still has some holes – for instance, how are fighters deterred from using PEDs when they’re not signed to bout agreements? – but it could prove to be a solid start.
Real Sports with Bryant Gumble did a pretty good piece on Olympic style testing. The problem with truly random screening for MMA Fighters isn’t necessarily the cost of flying someone out to test, it is coming up with a system to have them actually be at that location and ready for testing. The top 100 or something Olympic athletes in every single sport have to report their location 24 hours a day to the Olympic testing committee and be at those places ready for random testing all the time. Seems like a lot of hassle for even most UFC fighters.
Ufc wants guys juiced makes for better fights. Then they can cash in like din king. Kimbo on roids cudnt do nothin in ufc
What they could do is do the gathering of all necessary ‘data’ (being blood, urine, etc.) at the weigh-ins or the pre-fight conference which is a few days before the event. Still keep it random so for example to 8-10 fighters from the card instead of all of them or don’t do it at all events. The processing of the ‘data’ may take a while, so the fighters can be allowed to fight and then stripped of any reward/purse they received (charge them and ban them for an allotted time period) if they test positive kind of like Nick Diaz who was stripped of his gogoplata submission victory over Gomi after testing positive for marijuana.
I think this system keeps fighters on their toes and keeps fans entertained since fights won’t be canceled, just the result of the fight is altered to either a no-contest of a win for the clean individual.
Would be interesting what they would do if both guys tested positive though, lol.