Why Does the UFC Test for PEDS?

[HHJ]

How do they provide an unfair advantage if everyone has the option to use them?.

So you think Joe Blow has the same access to the same stuff as Jon Jones?

Is EVERY single person in the sport willingly to drastically alter their body like Vitor Belfort,who needs to bring a emotional support dog to the arena with him when hes not on the gear?

If that isnt a knock against steroid use (and abuse) I dont know what is.

 

[Dionysian]

Because it is good for marketing.

You say you do what your competitors don't do (test for PEDs) and it fools casuals who don't know you're lying.

It also helps stack the deck for your marketing.

Want to keep Jones and his gatorade sponsorship on top of the LHW division? Let USADA protect him while they pursue violations against the contenders beneath him and make sacrificial lambs of the 20k/20k guys who don't have the money to buy designer shit and don't have a whole org literally making up science for them.

I get why they do it but I really prefer the way it was before when it was a glorified IQ check. Or Pride where there was no pretense at all. Both those situations are far less corrupt.

 

[MPD-Psycho]

The competition vs. spectacle argument has been done to death so I’m not gonna rehash it here.

At the end of the day, I agree with those saying it’s a PR thing.

 

[Bend NvR Break]

Awesome.

We had something similar but I don’t recall what we called it. Two of my close friends went against each other and it was a proper pancake hit and one of them got up with his face mask bent.

I also recall that practice, particularly in preseason was a battle every play for who would get starting spots. There was no room for taking a play off to recover, someone would clean your clock. As our team was very good practice was frequently more grueling than games.

If you were dogging it in sprints the team would deal with it. I remember the coach walked into the locker room, saw what was going on and said “I’ll be back in 5 minutes.” When he came back a kid was completely wrapped in athletic tape, taped to a pole, helmet on with his own jock strap over his mouths
coach came back in, gave his speech and acted like their wasn’t a human mummy 10 feet away from him. And not one soul so much as smirked while this was going on. Including the kid taped to the pole.
Good times.

Yeah great times. We had ways of straightening the team out. We had team building boxing matches with junior matched up with seniors at the end up summer camp but before 2 a days.

Captain's practices was where guys really got called out for effort. No coaches just players. Really instilled the team over individual mindset. Guys that didn't assimilate into the tribe quit.

Can you remember the "are you hurt or are you injured" question?

Also if an OL missed a blocked and got the QB creamed the HC would have you stand still and a LB would smash you from your blindside and the HC would ask "did that feel good? Well that's what the QB feels everytime you miss a block."

Yeah times have changed. Miss those days.

 

[Gi Choke]

How do they provide an unfair advantage if everyone has the option to use them? That's like saying training harder than your opponent causes an unfair advantage.

Yes I know your post was steeped in sarcasm but I think it is important to be direct in this conversation.

I'm serious that I think banning peds from the sport is dumb and we probably have the data now to quash every counter argument because we have 5 years with testing data to show any benefits. I haven't done a study but I have a hunch we'll see no difference at all.

TS you're fucking blindingly stupid. Like naively stupid. You're not even making sense. You're just blabbing an immature opinion. You have to be under 15.
1. Its cheating.
2. How can we gaurantee no one has an unfair advantage? No peds.

 

[Wolfbrigade]

dude... it was a bullshit ploy to make ufc more marketable for sale. wme bought it, usada stayed. that's all there is to it.

 

[cws80us]

Look no further than the professional wrestling industry to see the damage that steroids can do. There are numerous examples of guys dying young due to steroid use.

 

[Roljo]

Here’s my take:

The real reason for USADA is for PR

General public opinion condemns PEDs

Mass PEDs can greatly damage the public perception and the value of the company if public at large views that the sport has PED issue.

In order to make the company more valuable they had to address that.

I’m willing to bet the UFC would not have been able to sell their broadcasting rights to ESPN without addressing PEDs in the sport.

They just could have said that they do their own testing, like the nba, nfl and so on.

 

[YungSithLxrd]

Yeah that's impossible if you're taking it the way you're supposed to.
But if that was some how the case you probably shouldn't be a professional athlete.
By the way you just described PEA abuse the amount of shit you have to take is inconceivable.

If you want an example just look at 80s WWF

Bro peoples bodies are different you can be a profess athlete without being perfect. A bodies response to physical abuse can be much higher than its tolerance to hormonal or organ abuse

There is no "supposed" to way

 

[Dreyga Hates You Sherbums]

They just could have said that they do their own testing, like the nba, nfl and so on.

The UFC isn’t as trusted as those leagues. They need to go the extra mile to earn public trust.

Having a third party do it makes it more legitimate or gives the appearance of legitimacy.

Having the toughest anti-doping program in the world helps as well.

 

[maximus__]

The Fertitta Brothers when enhanced drug testing was introduced were attempting to sell the company for multiple billions of dollars. So they had nothing to lose at the time.
And ended up laughing all the way to the bank.

Not to mention the athletes had absolutely no choice in this matter.

"difference between throwing a ball around a field or court to attempting to make someone unconscious"
No merit whatsoever just look at the sport of boxing.

And don't bring up the voluntary anti-doping Association.
That's pretty much saying here has a bunch of money only test my opponent.
It's a giant conflict of interest.

When it comes to widespread peds the only people that really affects are the athletes who haven't made it big yet.

We disagree then. The idea was to take the sport mainstream and move it out of the human cockfighting era. Things like USADA have assisting in allowing the sport to reach Madison Square garden in the face of previous opposition.
Mainstream appeal via Tv deals was the plan for long term growth. There was even talk of attempts to get MMA to the Olympics, but we saw what has happened to Judo there. Money was definitely a factor to sell of the company.

Athletes do have a choice. They can fight in other organisations that test least strictly. No one is forced to sign in the UFC unless they want a UFC title.
You get paid more in other orgs if you perform well and can chase sponsors. I prefer MMA in other orgs sometimes, but I view the UFC ranked fighters as the best of the best at the time with a couple outside entry standouts.

Boxing doesn't match MMA in terms of instant acute damage. The gloves are bigger, the fights get stopped faster and the ground game is a non factor.
CTE is just as bad but takes longer to show up. Boxing should also test better, but the UFC is effectively just an org that has decided it wants to be the top level of the sport.
Drug testing helps legitimize that.

You aren't wrong in lower level athletes getting affected more. Another reason IMO not to take them. You shouldn't need to take them to compete.
Why force people to make that choice? I think USADA is good for the sport, but I also enjoy watching other promotions conscious of the fact some of those fights are arguably more exciting.

 

[Humongo]

Even TRT reduces your sperm count to 0 according to my medical doctor and protein shakes can even have very slight but measueable impacts in a laboratory test. Care to share how that's avoidable?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076311/

Care to elaborate on that protein shake thing your doctor told you? Because your doctor may be a moron and you need to stop listening to him.

 

[superpunch]

Because it is good for marketing.

You say you do what your competitors don't do (test for PEDs) and it fools casuals who don't know you're lying.

It also helps stack the deck for your marketing.

Want to keep Jones and his gatorade sponsorship on top of the LHW division? Let USADA protect him while they pursue violations against the contenders beneath him and make sacrificial lambs of the 20k/20k guys who don't have the money to buy designer shit and don't have a whole org literally making up science for them.

I get why they do it but I really prefer the way it was before when it was a glorified IQ check. Or Pride where there was no pretense at all. Both those situations are far less corrupt.

The USADA testing system is actually legit. That's why it's so stupid. The exception for Jones actually makes sense if you read about it. He's already been punished for that steroid, and all they're finding is picograms. It might actually be pulsing picograms for the rest of his life. If they ever do find more than picograms, he's in trouble. All the other leagues do "testing", which leads to way more entertaining games.

 

[613]

Public perception. The average person thinks PEDs are evil, therefore the UFC (and every other sporting organization) has to pretend to give a fuck about them.

Most major leagues don't give a fuck

 

[613]

Want to keep Jones and his gatorade sponsorship on top of the LHW division? Let USADA protect him while they pursue violations against the contenders beneath him and make sacrificial lambs of the 20k/20k guys who don't have the money to buy designer shit and don't have a whole org literally making up science for them.

Hasn't Jones been stripped of the title twice and suspended for years because of getting caught?

 

[Dionysian]

The USADA testing system is actually legit. That's why it's so stupid. The exception for Jones actually makes sense if you read about it. He's already been punished for that steroid, and all they're finding is picograms. It might actually be pulsing picograms for the rest of his life. If they ever do find more than picograms, he's in trouble. All the other leagues do "testing", which leads to way more entertaining games.

Long story short making up science (no scientist on Earth used the phrase "pulsing" before, then all the sudden a lone organization agrees to apply it solely to one human on planet Earth) reeks.

Hasn't Jones been stripped of the title twice and suspended for years because of getting caught?

Nah. The first suspension was for the hit and run/nothing to do with PEDs. They gave him a belt back in his first fight back (vs OSP). The second one was PED related though. They also gave him the belt again in his first fight back. Despite literally having to move that fight because his "pulsing" made it so Nevada wouldn't sanction it. NSAC wasn't drinking the kool-aid regarding the "science" that USADA "discovered" which only, throughout all of human history, has only been applied to one guy haha.

 

[PeacePipe]

I was under the impression the argument against ped use is that there is a greater risk of injury in the cage.

It's been 5 years.

Can we get a study showing how many fewer injuries there are now that we have USADA?

And if it hasn't reduced the number or severity of injuries by any objective measure then unless there is another valid argument for it I am missing can we get rid of it? It seems to me that it is just a pointless waste of money that does nothing but serve to ruin good fights and shorten fighter's careers and earning potential.


EDIT**

The fighters make the sport. They work extremely hard in the gym to reach the top of the sport. By allowing them to take banned PEDs we know they can compete longer. That benefits both the fighter and the sport as a whole in my mind.
The fighter:
Fight longer, potentially, and therefore have greater potential career earnings, more fights, longer legacy, potentially better fighter into 30's or 40's with higher skill and maintained performance from peds.
The sport:
More parity. All fighters are better when they face better competition. PEDS allow longer training which means more skilled fighters. Certainly some fighters will just use that time to overuse and try to offset their skill gap with strength but I think the weight classes already handle most of those issues... and from the history of this sport we've seen with similar size, skill always wins, and usually skill wins even with a size discrepancy.​

Your initial premise is wrong. The reason is so they can put on events to the mainstream under the guise of being a legitimate sport.

We all know it's a corrupt circus . But to the outside casual, they will be all "omg usada, it's legit"

 

[RiotWyatt]

PEDs create an unfair advantage.
Some can afford/have access to more than others.
That creates potential for serious injuries.

 

[superpunch]

Long story short making up science (no scientist on Earth used the phrase "pulsing" before, then all the sudden a lone organization agrees to apply it solely to one human on planet Earth) reeks.

Scientists work in theory and academic journals, and work very slow. The real world moves too fast for that. Real world organizations follow the engineering approach: they do things because they work, even if they don't understand the theory. Airplanes are like this; no one is 100% sure how planes fly with the flow of air but we have models that work, even if we don't know exactly why. So, we fly airplanes anyways. Is light a wave or a particle? Who knows exactly, but computers and light bulbs work. What exactly, is gravity and how does it work on a quantum level? I don't know, but no one knows; the models we have work well enough -- so we use them for space travel anyways. Unless Jones found a way to take only picograms or hide it to just picograms, pulsing modeling makes sense to explain what's happening. So, it makes sense for USADA to consider it.

 

[Dionysian]

Scientists work in theory and academic journals, and work very slow. The real world moves too fast for that. Real world organizations follow the engineering approach: they do things because they work, even if they don't understand the theory. Airplanes are like this; no one is 100% sure how planes fly with the flow of air but we have models that work, even if we don't know exactly why. So, we fly airplanes anyways. Is light a wave or a particle? Who knows exactly, but computers and light bulbs work. What exactly, is gravity and how does it work on a quantum level? I don't know, but no one knows; the models we have work well enough -- so we use them for space travel anyways. Unless Jones found a way to take only picograms or hide it to just picograms, pulsing modeling makes sense to explain what's happening. So, it makes sense for USADA to consider it.

The problem with your analogy though is all those things you mentioned are reproducible... the airplane flies. Space travel has been done over and over. That's the basis of science... reproducing results based on the scientific method. Jones/USADA is the polar opposite of that. It is theorizing based on something that is NOT reproduced. "Well yeah maybe this guy has a magic condition where he umm... pulses." And when someone asks the question "but does anyone else in human history have this magic condition?" the only way to answer is "Well ummm no... but yeah... pulsing! Cutting edge science!"

It dumps the scientific method on its head, which is why it is so damn insulting. In that sense it is not just psuedo-science... it is actually anti-science. Just fucking say "he makes us money and we like money" instead of couching your lies in bullshit anti-science.

A better analogy would be to say a con-man telling you to drink snake oil because it made him fly. When you ask to see anyone on Earth fly so you can believe a word he says, he just mumbles a catch-phrase "snake-fly! science!" and then runs off. That is a better analogy for "pulsing."