Why did fighters on TRT become monsters?

[PicoPulse]

Uberreem

 

[markg171]

It amazes me that 7 years after TRT was banned people still literally know nothing about it. Which is what caused it to be banned in the first place.

TRT itself was NEVER the issue. Someone following their TUE would wind up having the same testosterone levels that someone THEIR OWN AGE WITH NORMAL levels would have. It would never have given you a benefit besides you no longer suffering from low testosterone. If you were 35 you would have the same level as any other 35 year old. They were never taking 35 year olds and making them have the T-levels of 25 year olds again. Which means you your opponent very much likely could've had higher testorone levels than you did, even with TRT. You're at low-normal, they might not be.

What the issue was was people abusing TRT to get their levels ABOVE normal. That's no different than simply taking steroids on the side, except far stupider. Vitor, Marquardt, Bigfoot, etc., all the guys who failed their drug tests did so precisely because they were trying to use TRT as regular steroids, not as the bump up to normal. Hence why Vitor was like 6x the limit, Bigfoot was caught taking extra doses, etc. They were just literally cheating.

But in an incredibly stupid way. Back then the only blood testing was being done on the fighters using TRT. Everybody else got piss tested. If you wanted to take testosterone it would be far smarter to simply just not get a TRT TUE as then you only have to pass the T:E ratio piss test, which was allowing anywhere from 4-6x the amount of testosterone depending on the state before they'd flag it as a failure as that was the "non-human" threshold. So long as you literally weren't hitting the absolute impossibility of human T:E you were passing back then. So so long as you did basic math you could walk into the cage with a 6:1 testosterone ratio instead of the normal 1:1 you should've had and you'd pass the drug test. Meanwhile the TRT guys had to hit their actual normal level, confirmed via blood levels test instead of ratios, for their age. A TRT guy literally might've been fighting a guy with 6x the T as him and the commission wouldn't have flagged it so long as his ratio looked correct.

There has never been a greater litmus test for how stupid both the fighters and fans are than TRT. It literally was a witch hunt. Ban the retards abusing it, but the guys who just hit their levels like they were supposed ended up getting punished in that they now had to compete with low levels meanwhile their opponent (presumably) has at least normal levels.

 

[markg171]

I´m no specialist, but as far as I know the so call normal levels of testosterone are not actually normal... I mean, if you show up with a 2:1 ratio you will pass the test, but this is above what the average man produces... So basically what the TRT fighters were doing was put their testo level at the maximun accepted by the exam (wich is way more than the normal human being)

It was the opposite. The TRT fighters were being blood tested to hit their actual blood testosterone levels for their age group.

Meanwhile the non-TRT fighters only had to pass T:E ratio piss tests, which allowed 4:1 or 6:1 testosterone:epitestoerone ratios depending on the state, when the normal ratio for a man is 1:1. They were getting a 4-6x allowance before the commission would flag them.

You literally had to be a moron to try and cheat using TRT lol.

 

[Wolfbrigade]

LOL @ OP

TRT era meant you can take whatever you want, and when comission will bust you, then you procure a trt exemption.

Anyways, guys like vitor were always on the sauce. He just started to tamper with the TUE around 2011/2012.

 

[Kvothe_the_kingkiller]

It amazes me that 7 years after TRT was banned people still literally know nothing about it. Which is what caused it to be banned in the first place.

TRT itself was NEVER the issue. Someone following their TUE would wind up having the same testosterone levels that someone THEIR OWN AGE WITH NORMAL levels would have. It would never have given you a benefit besides you no longer suffering from low testosterone. If you were 35 you would have the same level as any other 35 year old. They were never taking 35 year olds and making them have the T-levels of 25 year olds again. Which means you your opponent very much likely could've had higher testorone levels than you did, even with TRT. You're at low-normal, they might not be.

What the issue was was people abusing TRT to get their levels ABOVE normal. That's no different than simply taking steroids on the side, except far stupider. Vitor, Marquardt, Bigfoot, etc., all the guys who failed their drug tests did so precisely because they were trying to use TRT as regular steroids, not as the bump up to normal. Hence why Vitor was like 6x the limit, Bigfoot was caught taking extra doses, etc. They were just literally cheating.

But in an incredibly stupid way. Back then the only blood testing was being done on the fighters using TRT. Everybody else got piss tested. If you wanted to take testosterone it would be far smarter to simply just not get a TRT TUE as then you only have to pass the T:E ratio piss test, which was allowing anywhere from 4-6x the amount of testosterone depending on the state before they'd flag it as a failure as that was the "non-human" threshold. So long as you literally weren't hitting the absolute impossibility of human T:E you were passing back then. So so long as you did basic math you could walk into the cage with a 6:1 testosterone ratio instead of the normal 1:1 you should've had and you'd pass the drug test. Meanwhile the TRT guys had to hit their actual normal level, confirmed via blood levels test instead of ratios, for their age. A TRT guy literally might've been fighting a guy with 6x the T as him and the commission wouldn't have flagged it so long as his ratio looked correct.

There has never been a greater litmus test for how stupid both the fighters and fans are than TRT. It literally was a witch hunt. Ban the retards abusing it, but the guys who just hit their levels like they were supposed ended up getting punished in that they now had to compete with low levels meanwhile their opponent (presumably) has at least normal levels.

TLDR: Fighters abused what could have been a decent program. To no one's surprise who knows anything about sports, capitalism or human psychology. Especially considering the states never did any decent amount of regulation.

In theory a guy like Hendo finds out his level is 45 and most 36 year olds are 300, so he brings it up to 200 in a well monitored program.

Never mind why it was 45 in the first place - that's a whole different topic. Point being, it just never worked like that in reality.

 

[koquerelle]

aside from vitor, who else became a monster?

dan henderson couldn't win the belt with TRT
frank mir lost all his fights
rampage got chased out of UFC
forrest griffin could only beat tito ortiz
chael sonnen got outgrappled by bisping

CHEATERS NEVER WIN

Good job leaving Couture out of the list.
Hendo couldn't win the belt, but got good years out of it.
Sonnen couldn't win the belt, but got good years out of it.

 

[nately]

All pro athletes use PEDs. The advantage of TRT is that they don't have to come off during fights or use masking agents. They can also use long ester testosterone instead of the short-acting testosterone suspension. In sum, TRT allows supra-natural testosterone levels 24/7, while regular PED usage requires cycling testosterone.

I think the UFC should allow TRT for fighters above 40. It allows so many fighters to extend their careers.

 

[Kvothe_the_kingkiller]

This was before USADA, and the fighters' own doctors tested them normally except just periodically by the commissions, right? But... let's assume not.

Off the bat, I can think of so many loopholes even for the USADA era if they allowed TRT though. You get a prescription for the kind that gets out of your body in like 1 day. Then whenever they test you, it'll be probably be in "natural" or thereof amounts. The catch being that if you have no TRT prescription, any amount gets you a failed test (unless you have a picogram exemption). But with TRT.. well, yeah, that's quite a huge window of allowable amounts on something with a short half life. If I can think of that, and I don't even work out and I'm one of the dumbest posters here lmfao, imagine what the smart fighters with coaches were actually doing.

That said.. I wonder about transgenders in sports and their hormone tests. They'll of course have to pass hormone tests.. and so did UFC fighters. I wonder if we're ever gonna see TRTor in the womens olympics. I can't predict the future but it'll be interesting to see if it plays out in parallel like it did in the ufc.

I heard in an interview with a USADA president that USADA has done two TRT TUE's ever; both Olympics. One guy lost a testicle in a car accident. They'd had thousands of petitions over the years. Two were approved.

But Chael got a doctor's note from his chiropractor.

That's really all anyone needs to know about the State AC programs to allow TRT.

 

[Chael_Sonnen]

Yeah this. I'm pretty sure it makes you more aggresive, more willing to pull the trigger, and less likely to get the sort of adrenaline dump that slows fighters down.

It also has a mental effect.

 

[HHJ]

aside from vitor, who else became a monster?

dan henderson couldn't win the belt with TRT
frank mir lost all his fights
rampage got chased out of UFC
forrest griffin could only beat tito ortiz
chael sonnen got outgrappled by bisping

CHEATERS NEVER WIN

Vitor didnt win the belt either thank god,but it obviously helped all of them,plus vitor clearly overabused it. Look at him in the machida fight without it. Hes a fuckin mess

 

[Epicman1324]

"Why did performance athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs have their performance enhanced"

 

[Fioretti]

Essentially the reason athletes "age" or pass their prime is almost exclusively attributed to a decrease in testosterone levels. If you bring those levels up to where they were in their late 20s to early 30s, they're as capable as they were then, but also carry over their experience.

In a sense, TRT evens the playing field for older guys by making their levels "normal", but the major advantage comes from all the experience they have combined with those normal levels. A 25 year old can't have 20 years of experience in pro MMA that a 40 year old on TRT can have, despite their T levels being identical. The advantage isn't from just the T.

At least that's my view on it from what I've seen in gyms and in the big leagues.

 

[BROWNPRIDE]

Trt makes them mini hulks.

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

if it's wrong then why didn't a single TRT user win a belt in UFC??

Hendo likely would have taken bisping’s belt and defended it if he still could have had his trt

 

[taugrim]

Lmao at OP thinking that these guys got legit prescriptions for low test, and that they had low test to begin with.

Exactly.

Then guys who were on TRT got low on natural testosterone production, so they needed more TRT.

 

[WHITE ANDERSON]

Hendo likely would have taken bisping’s belt and defended it if he still could have had his trt

ok but why did he lose rampage and anderson when he was in his prime and on trt????

he even got destroyed by jake shields

 

[WHITE ANDERSON]

Good job leaving Couture out of the list.
Hendo couldn't win the belt, but got good years out of it.
Sonnen couldn't win the belt, but got good years out of it.

i left couture because he never had a TUE exemption

 

[Bookerman]

You can simply run a cycle then come off. You’ll have all the low T levels needed for TRT script. A good Dr however should run a few test over a few weeks to be sure nothing dodgy is going on, but can easily be frigged to suit.
I would say the likes of Vitor was almonst certainly not solely on TRT

 

[Bowel-forged Stool]

ok but why did he lose rampage and anderson when he was in his prime and on trt????

he even got destroyed by jake shields

I guess those guys were better than bisping

 

[WHITE ANDERSON]

1) we don't know they didn't.

what the fuck are you talking about? we do know because to be on TRT, you needed a TUE exemption from the athletic commission and that was public record.