After a well-publicized false start to begin the year, the UFC finally showed the teeth of its proposed performance-enhancing drug-testing program on Wednesday—though it remains to be seen how much bite will follow the bark.
Spurred by a recent string of high-profile test failures, company executives held a press conference televised on Fox Sports 1 to announce plans to partner with independent third-party regulators in launching year-round out-of-competition testing for all its athletes by July 1.
UFC President Dana White, CEO Lorenzo Fertitta and general counsel Lawrence Epstein also said the UFC will continue to work with state athletic commissions to advocate for stiffer penalties and to fund increased testing across the board.
“Honestly? It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better,” said Fertitta of PEDs scandals that ensnared UFC fighters like Anderson Silva and Hector Lombard so far in 2015. “But we have to put these procedures in place to eventually make it better. It’s going to be a bumpy road, but we’re committed to making this happen.”
“I hate it,” White echoed a few minutes later, when asked about PEDs. “I hate everything about it. If you can’t compete in this sport with your natural abilities you don’t belong here.”
All of this obviously sounded very good to anti-doping advocates, who have long clamored for the fight company to take a more active role in fighting PEDs.
It also all sounded entirely theoretical. Close observers likely came away from the UFC press conference with questions, few of which seemed to have easy answers.
Like anything else, the devil of this kind of sweeping regulation will be in the details. The true test will not be merely announcing new comprehensive testing or even organizing, funding and implementing it. Those things will all be complicated and expensive, yes, but they will also be the easy parts.
There are organizations like the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency and United States Anti-Doping Agency whose job it is to design and maintain high-level drug-testing programs. The UFC just needs to sign a deal with one of them and let it handle the nuts and bolts of what will be a vast and intricate machine.
No, the real heavy lifting for the fight company won’t start until the next high-profile UFC fighter tests positive. Then we’ll really see what we’re dealing with here, particularly when it comes to how the promotion will mete out its punishments.
Though Fertitta said he hopes for widespread adoption of the World Anti-Doping Agency Code, it’s difficult to forecast how much of the tectonic change we heard about this week is possible or how it will go over.
Changes to the WADA code at the beginning 2015 now call for two-four year bans for initial PED test failures, depending on any number of mitigating factors. These rules, however, were created chiefly with four-year events like the Olympics in mind, so it’s possible they won’t prove to be a perfect fit for a sport like MMA.
Fertitta repeatedly said he’d like to see “a minimum of two years” be the standard for a first offense. But if state athletic commissions balk or are slow to act, we don’t know if the UFC will blaze its own trail to authorize harsher punishments or if it will merely continue to operate within the framework of commission rules.
Something that may be even more worrying: If drug use at MMA’s highest levels is as widespread as some believe and a large swath of UFC stars begin failing enhanced tests, will the organization really have the guts to put them on the shelf for two or even four years at a time?
And how would that affect an already belabored pay-per-view business model?
There are also more complicated legal matters percolating. So long as UFC fighters remain classified as independent contractors the line between what the company is and isn’t allowed to stipulate in its standard athlete contracts remains blurry.
Fighters could take umbrage to more invasive testing, seeing it as a violation of their privacy. While unionization still seems out of reach, at some point athletes may well (and frankly should) demand a say in these big-ticket policy changes, all of which seem to go down without their consent.
So, yeah. There is just a lot we still don’t know.
If it all comes off as mentioned, Wednesday’s press conference might amount to a significant turning point in our sport’s short history. Right now, however, it’s difficult to say anything with any certainty, and frankly you can’t blame fans for looking on all this talk with a healthy dose of skepticism.
The UFC’s latest announcement came six months after it revealed it would begin testing its 500-plus fighters during 2015 and a bit more than a month since it abruptly scrapped those plans. If the fight company is ready to try again, that’s wonderful news. It’ll just be a little while before we know for sure.
At least now we have reason to believe the world’s largest MMA promotion has its considerable shoulders pointed in the right direction. That alone is cause for at least some cautious, maybe even dubious celebration.
Now we sit back and wait to see what—if anything—actually happens.
Chad Dundas covers MMA for Bleacher Report.
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