With Alistair Overeem facing the Nevada State Athletic Commission on April 24, UFC president Dana White is less than two weeks away from knowing whether or not he'll still have Overeem's services in the headlining slot of UFC 146.
Overeem, of course, is the latest fighter accused of abusing testosterone replacement therapy after a random NSAC test found his testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio was 14-to-1, well over the allowable 6-to-1 ratio.
So is White now ready to ramp up monitoring and institute a UFC-run random-testing procedure? Absolutely not, said White. It's simply not realistic.
"We don't do random testing," White said at Saturday's post-UFC on FUEL TV 2 press conference in Stockholm. "First of all, all the guys who come into the UFC, now we changed the policy. You sign a deal with us, you get tested. You go into 'The Ultimate Fighter,' you get tested. We test. We don't even have to [expletive] test. That's not what we do. That's what the athletic commission does.
"Then the athletic commission now is doing random tests before, leading up to the fight, after the fight. They're being tested like crazy. The [expletive] testing in this sport is insane. It is literally the gold standard in all of sports."
It's not that White doesn't support testing in the sport, he said, it's just that he doesn't believe he could possibly track down his roster in order to execute such a plan. And since there are commissions in place to handle such affairs, White said he and his employees are focused on their day-to-day responsibilities, which leave little in the way of spare time.
"I have 375 fighters in every country all over the world," White said. "The battle that I have to get these guys to get their [expletive] bout agreements back and show up for press is [expletive] unbelievable. The fact that I have to make personal phone calls to tell guys to talk to the [expletive] press, now I'm going to start making personal phone calls to go show up for random drug tests?
"The general public and the media need to grasp some [expletive] concept of reality. The reality of us doing all the [expletive] things that we're doing when we already have the gold standard in drug testing, and then [expletive] try to chase 375 guys all over the world to randomly test them, too? It's impossible. You look at all the other organizations, … you look at all the other companies that have tried to do what we do, nobody can [expletive] do it. You know why? Because this job is insane."
White pointed to his own schedule, which included a Friday night filming of "The Ultimate Fighter" in Las Vegas before flying to Sweden to attend UFC on FUEL TV 2 on Saturday night. Where, White asked, is he supposed to slide the oversight of a testing program into that type of hectic work week?
"It's [expletive] crazy," White said. "I was standing in Las Vegas 10 hours ago filming a [expletive] TV show. Now I'm sitting here, and I'm going to randomly drug test 375 guys around the world?
"You know where I'm going in a few hours? To [expletive] Abu Dhabi. Then I go back and film 'The Ultimate Fighter.' Then I go back to Atlanta, Miami, and I'm in [expletive] Rio de Janeiro for three hours, then back to Las Vegas, where I'll film 'The Ultimate Fighter' again. And in between there somewhere, I'm going to randomly drug test 375 fighters?"
When pressed as to whether he could simply build a team capable of handling the process rather than personally oversee the work, White explained that while that idea may sound good in theory, the nature of fighters leaves that completely unrealistic.
"We have a ton of staff, and the answer isn't throwing more bodies at this thing," White said. "When all this [expletive] happens, I have to make personal phone calls. Me. I have a full PR team, right? Good people – people from all over the world that have great [expletive] resumes and everything else. I have to make personal phone calls and say, 'Dude, why are you not showing up for this [expletive] thing you're supposed to do? Did you say no, you wouldn't do this?' I'm still making personal phone calls like that.
"It's an easy, random, general fun thing to throw around and say, 'Hey, I don't think the UFC is doing enough. I think they should do this and randomly drug test their 375 fighters.' We're already [expletive] doing it when they sign their contracts. It's being done before they come on 'The Ultimate Fighter.' It's being done by the athletic commission before, during and after fights. It's just, you guys are being [expletive] ridiculous."
The issue of performance-enhancing drug use has taken on a big role in MMA in recent months. Fighters like Chael Sonnen, Nate Marquardt and now Overeem have brought attention to the potential misuse of testosterone-replacement therapy.
White actually refused to discuss Overeem's situation on Saturday night, claiming he was too emotional about the subject to control his own response.
"I don't want to talk about it," White told MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com). "I'm too upset about it. Seriously, I can't talk about it.
"I will snap and freak out, and I don't want to do that. I can't talk about it."
But he did want to make one thing clear: While random testing is simply not feasible, he doesn't believe the company is turning a blind eye to what seems to be a growing problem.
"We are involved," White said. "Seriously, and I know that this is a crazy-hot topic right now, but literally in all of sports, we have the gold standard in testing policies and everything else the way these guys are tested.
"These guys are getting tested all the time. You know why we're sitting here talking about this? Because these guys are being [expletive] tested."
Cheating in sports is nothing new. Sports like baseball and cycling, for instance, have recently gone through very public PED scandals, and the reputation of not only the athletes but the sports, themselves, took major hits. Some MMA pundits suggest MMA is dangerously close to a similar challenge, but White believes the vast majority of his athletes are clean, and he thinks it's unfair to assume otherwise.
"It's not a secret, and it's not a secret in sports that you're going to have guys who are going to try to cheat," White said. "But guess what – to label the entire [expletive] sport this way? There's a lot of guys who don't cheat. There's a lot of guys who work hard and sacrifice and do all the right things, so to lump everybody into this drug-testing conversation is unfair to the guys that don't. And if you look at how many fights we put on and how much we've done over the last 11 years, there aren't a lot of [expletive] guys getting busted for using this stuff."
Overeem's fate will be determined on April 24, but it will hardly mark the end of the discussion of testosterone and performance-enhancing drugs in MMA. Pandora's box has been opened it seems, and the country's most notable athletic commissions are beginning to address potential policy changes.
White said he applauds any and all of their efforts. However, he wants MMA pundits to realize that asking him to take over a random-testing program simply will not do. White said the UFC is doing all it can to catch cheaters, and he hopes his athletes are taking similar responsibility for themselves.
"For people to say, 'UFC should randomly test,' do you have any [expletive] idea how much [expletive] I do in a week?" White asked. "You know what I mean? And how many guys we're trying to keep a rein of and this and that and the other thing? You're grown men. You're [expletive] adults. You're professional athletes. How many [expletive] times do you have to be told not to do this? To the point where you just completely blow your entire [expletive] career?
"When people start saying, 'This is starting to affect the credibility,' it does not affect the credibility of the UFC. We are 100 percent more on top of drug testing than any other [expletive] sport on earth, other than the Olympics."
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