Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
After T.J. Dillashaw tested positive for EPO — leading to him losing his Bantamweight title and getting suspended for two years — Cody Garbrandt had the right to say “I told you so,” as “No Love” had been adamant for some time that his former teammate was not fighting clean.
So you can’t blame him for being super upset after USADA finally caught up with T.J., seeing as how he suffered two knockout defeats to him in the span of 10 months.
“But I know I’m the best in the world, drug free,”Cody told MMA Junkie recently. “I’ve had over 40 tests from USADA, and there’s nothing that’s been illegal,” he added while saying he is still all for stricter drug testing to make sure everyone’s fighting fair.
“I stated back in 2017 at the press conference that I would like to do more invasive testing with it. We have to log in everywhere we go, we have to answer the door at 6 a.m., piss urine and blood and do work, write down every supplement we have. There should be no boundaries or picos or this or that. You either cheat or you don’t,” he added.
Despite Dillashaw getting handed a lengthy suspension, Cody is still upset that no one took him serious when he was screaming at the top of his lungs when it came to accusing T.J. of being on performance enhancing drugs (PED’s).
And though he claims “Viper” showed the entire Team Alpha Male Team (TAM) how to properly take the banned substances, they never went through with it.
“We’re not in there shooting steroids up and getting big. They’re doing the EPO. They’re doing all that kind of (expletive) to cardio base. I knew that. I knew T.J. was on that, and that’s why I said I wanted more invasive testing,” said Cody.
“He’s been on it for five, six years, and that’s not the only thing he’s on. There’s a lot of other fighters that are on a lot of other (expletive), too.”
USADA did state that EPO wasn’t high up on its priority list initially, and when you take Jon Jones’ picograms cases, it seems USADA could be a bit more consistent when it comes to its process. If not, then Garbrandt says just do away with it and let everyone juice.
“If you’re going to draw a line on what we can do or how we can test – you can’t keep this sample, you can’t detect the EPO – then what are we getting tested for? Let it all be legal, and let’s all get juiced up and go in there and (expletive) each other up. That’s ultimately what they want.”