It is safe to say that everything about the Ultimate Fighting Championship will change on July 1.
That’s the day the UFC’s new anti-doping policy will go into effect. The fight promotion has teamed up with the United States Anti-Doping Agency for the program, which will see every fighter on the UFC roster subjected to out-of competition testing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
It is a landmark moment for the UFC and its constant battle against the notion that mixed martial arts is a dirty sport. Intent on cleaning things up, it has handed total control of testing to an outside agency that has implemented one of the harshest testing regimes in all of sport.
Things are changing, and they are changing for the better. But so much of the testing program remains under a cloud of mystery. Fighters and fans aren’t certain what to expect when the program goes into effect.
To answer many of the questions we have about the UFC’s new program, we spoke with Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA. Tygart became CEO of USADA in 2007 and has been on the forefront of the war on performance-enhancing drugs ever since.
Administration
USADA’s administration website is called Athlete Advantage. Each UFC fighter will be given a login to the site, and it is accessible via regular web browsers or through smartphones. In Athlete Advantage, fighters will find a host of information related to the anti-doping program. The full WADA list of banned substances is available. There are tutorials that walk each fighter through the collection process. According to Tygart, Athlete Advantage is designed to give each fighter a baseline of how the program works.
Fighters will also use the USADA Whereabouts program. Once per quarter, they’ll need to update a database of information that contains their home address, work address, gym address and cellphone number. If a fighter is aware that they’ll be going on vacation during a certain week in the future, or if they are traveling for other reasons, they will add that information. If the vacation or other information changes, they will ideally need to update that as soon as they can.
What this means: Fighters will not be required to update their location when they travel to the store or when they go out to eat. But if they’ll be located anywhere other than their home address or gym for an extended period of time, they’ll need to update that information.
Testing
The minimum amount of tests each year for the UFC organization as a whole is roughly 2,750. Tygart said that doesn’t mean each UFC fighter on the roster will be tested an equal amount of times, however.
“We don’t put all of their names into a hat and then pull them out one by one until they’ve all been tested,” he said.
USADA uses a policy, published by WADA, called the International Standard for Testing. In the introduction to the standard, WADA reveals the mission statement:
The first purpose of the International Standard for Testing and Investigations is to plan for intelligent and effective Testing, both In-Competition and Out-of-Competition, and to maintain the integrity and identity of the Samples collected from the point the Athlete is notified of the test to the point the Samples are delivered to the laboratory for analysis.
The second purpose of the International Standard for Testing and Investigations is to establish mandatory standards for the efficient and effective gathering, assessment and use of anti-doping intelligence and for the efficient and effective conduct of investigations into possible anti-doping rule violations.
USADA implements intelligent testing (or smart testing) instead of purely random testing. It is strategic from the top down, from the selection of who will be tested to whether blood, urine or both will be used.
USADA selects these tests based on a number of factors, most of which are kept internal and not shared with the fighters or with the UFC. It might receive a call to the whistleblower hotline that says a certain fighter is using something. It accounts for past test results.
The key to the program, Tygart said, is not catching cheaters. The key is the deterrent effect that comes with uncertainty. Fighters should never know when a test is coming, and they should never know how they will be tested.
“We don’t want to catch people unless they’re cheating. You have to have a deterrent objective,” Tygart said. “The point of an anti-doping program is to be unpredictable, but also to be fair and objective.”
Once an athlete is selected for testing, a sample collector is dispatched to the locations listed by the athlete in the Whereabouts program. They’ll show up at their house or their gym with no notification, creating a sense of absolute surprise.
And since the program is 24/7/365, collectors can (and will) show up at all hours of the day and night.
Once the collector has notified the athlete that they’re being tested, the athlete will remain under observation by the collector. If they are training, they will be allowed to finish their training session; Tygart said his collectors will never interrupt gym sessions.
A database of all tests conducted will be updated on USADA’s website; visitors to the site will be able to select any fighter on the UFC roster and see the dates of all their tests. If sanctions are taken against a fighter, those results and all associated material (press releases, etc) will be available as well.
The UFC is not notified about tests before they happen. It will find out tests have taken place at the same time as the general public, when USADA updates its website. The promotion is not involved in the testing or sanctioning process at all; it has completely removed itself. USADA will handle all testing, arbitration and sanctions and will inform the UFC of the actions it has taken on its own.
Fight-Night Testing
When USADA’s deal with the UFC was announced, many wondered if it meant USADA would now handle all testing for the promotion, including fight-night screenings. That is not the case. There will be some fight-night testing that takes place under USADA’s control, and there will be some coordination with local state athletic commissions.
“In an ideal world, we’re not doing two samples for one fight,” Tygart said. “It’s not an automatic test for us after the fight. It may be by the commission, but it won’t be for us.”
The idea, Tygart said, is still to act as a deterrent, even on fight night. But USADA’s main focus is out-of-competition testing; roughly 50 percent of the total tests conducted by USADA each year on UFC fighters will come in the form of out-of-competition tests.
“There won’t necessarily be a post-fight test on each card conducted by us,” Tygart said.
Handling of Results
State athletic commissions have been lambasted for their seeming inability to return results of pre-fight drug tests before the actual fight being tested takes place. The most famous of these recent examples was the case of Anderson Silva, who failed a random drug test for PEDs prior to his bout against Nick Diaz. The results didn’t come back until after the fight had already taken place.
One of the foremost questions on everybody’s mind is this: Will USADA, with all of its experience and all of its network of clinics, be able to return drug test results in time for negative results to affect a scheduled fight? And will it avoid a scenario like the one in 2013, when boxer Erik Morales was allowed to compete despite failing two drug tests?
“You don’t want to rush science. We all want them expedited, and we want those results within minutes of the samples being taken. We don’t want to have athletes who may have violated the rules competing,” Tygart said. “But the reality is that the complexity of the testing, it just takes longer than that.”
Tygart said USADA refuses to give guarantees on how long it will take to get results back. The lab might notice something odd with a test and believe that a screening for EPO or HGH should be run on the sample. Or a carbon isotope ratio test should be performed; Tygart said CIR tests can take multiple days to complete.
“What’s worse than getting the test result after a fight is rushing it and getting it wrong and accusing someone who didn’t violate the rules and not having them fight in the bout they’re scheduled to fight,” he said. “Those are the competing interests. We understand the issues, and we want to get them done as fast as we can and have them before the fight. But there are no guarantees that can be accomplished every time given the nature of science.”
Time Frame
The UFC’s new anti-doping policy goes into effect on July 1. That’s the hard date handed down by the UFC when the program was announced. But should fighters expect USADA sample collectors to begin showing up at their door in the middle of the night on July 1? Perhaps.
The first step, Tygart said, is educating UFC fighters on the new system. They’ll need instructions on the Whereabouts program, and they’ll need to learn what they’ll be tested for.
“They’ll need to learn that it is a new day, and if they’ve been on stuff in the past, they’re going to face consequences if they’re still on it,” Tygart said. “Nobody wants to unfairly or with no proper notice test them. But the UFC has also been clear going back to February and even last year that they are putting a new program in place and people better take warning and start to change behavior.
“So all of the athletes should appreciate that come July 1st, they are subject to testing and the consequences that come along with it.”
USADA will be rolling out education programs over the next few weeks in the hopes of educating every UFC fighter on the roster.
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