The ‘steroid era’ in Ultimate Fight Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts (MMA) is coming to an abrupt end on July 1st, 2015. At least, this is what UFC and the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) would like you to think. That is the date when the new UFC Anti-Doping Policy goes into effect.
The new UFC Anti-Doping Policy brings together two of the war on doping’s biggest guns – the fame anti-doping government investigator Jeff Novitzky and the determined USADA CEO Travis Tygart.
Novitzky joins the UFC as the Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance in charge of overseeing the UFC’s new steroid policy. The same relentless and dogged government investigator who went after Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Lance Armstrong will not set his sights on the current crop of UFC superstars as part of his new job in the private sector.
The new UFC Anti-Doping Policy also designates USADA as an official partner and the independent third-party in charge of implementing every single aspect of the Anti-Doping Policy. This means that USADA will be in charge of doping sample collection, sample storage, testing at WADA-accredited laboratories, reporting and management of results, science and research as well as a comprehensive anti-doping education program for all UFC athletes.
The agreement is a huge victory for USADA. For years, USADA has been highly critical of the incompetent testing programs in the sport of MMA with particular criticism of UFC. It is not an exaggeration to say that USADA has been a thorn in the side of UFC President Dana White for many years.
The policy was closely modeled after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code. The WADA Code is considered the “gold standard” of anti-doping testing. It leads the world with the most comprehensive anti-doping policies ever developed. USADA is WADA’s national anti-doping organization in charge of enforcing the WADA Code in the United States.
USADA’s stated goal of protecting the health and safety of athletes arguably falls short. Make no mistake, USADA takes a punitive approach towards any athlete caught using steroids rather than a harm reduction approach for athletes. USADA is an agency whose primary interest is to promote a moral agenda. In actuality, USADA could care less about the physical and psychological health of the steroid-using athletes. It is far more interested in harshly punishing athletes who are caught doping.
Putting USADA’s moral agenda aside, will the new UFC Anti-Doping Policy effectively detect and/or deter steroid use by UFC-signed athletes?
It will certainly be an improvement over the incompetent and mismanaged anti-doping policies seen in recent years. It honestly could not have gotten much worse. For the past few years, it seemed like UFC was woefully and willingly ignorant when it came to keeping the sport free from steroids.
The best example of UFC’s incompetence was its seemingly encouragement of steroid use in the form of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). UFC allowed any fighter to use the steroid testosterone as long as they had a note and a prescription from a medical doctor. UFC granted therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for steroids to practically everyone who applied. UFC was incapable of recognizing the need for stringent diagnostic criteria for hypogonadism to justify the medical necessity of TRT.
By contrast, the WADA Code has strict diagnostic guidelines for hypogonadism. An athlete must meet these criteria before they are granted a TUE. WADA explicitly refuses to grant a TUE for testosterone to athletes who receive a diagnosis of hypogonadism based on low blood serum testosterone levels without a specified etiology. WADA refuses to grant a testosterone TUE to any athlete with ‘low normal’ levels of serum testosterone. And WADA categorically refuses to grant TUEs for testosterone as an anti-aging treatment or a treatment for generalized fatigue, slow recovery from exercise and/or decreased libido.
The UFC decision to partner with USADA/WADA is a great move especially for public relations. Unfortunately, even though USADA may be the world’s premier national anti-doping organization and the WADA Code may represent the gold standard or testing, the anti-doping organizations have been notoriously ineffective at catching most steroid users. The doping detection rate has been steady at approximately 1% since the inception of WADA in the late 1990s. Credible estimates suggest that as many as 20-50% of athletes in drug-tested sport may be using some type of prohibited substances. Yet, the PED use goes undetected in most cases.
The UFC Anti-Doping Policy will likely result in a number of steroid positives over the next few months. The detections will be easy given that MMA athletes have never been required to be very sneaky about their steroid use. A few may be surprised by the comprehensive approach implemented by USADA.
In response to the new UFC/USADA arrangement, most doped MMA athletes will eventually become more sophisticated in their doping techniques so that steroid use goes undetected.
Rather than representing the end of the ‘steroid era’ in UFC/MMA, it will merely represent a dramatic transformation of the sport that favors intelligent and sophisticated steroid users over the not-so-smart and unsophisticated steroid users.