MMA legend Georges St-Pierre returned from a nearly four-year absence to submit Michael Bisping and win the middleweight title in the main event of last November’s UFC 217 from New York City.
He’s since vacated that title and is entertaining other options, presumably at lower weights, but GSP has still kept his eye on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in the UFC – one of the main reasons he vacated his title after a controversial split decision over Johny Hendricks in 2013. The UFC implemented their anti-doping partnership with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in 2015, yet St-Pierre isn’t buying that it’s actually cleaned up the sport of MMA.
Speaking in detail about the topic on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (via MMA Fighting), St-Pierre mapped out how a fighter could skirt the USADA whereabouts requirement using advanced technology of rapidly-evolving PEDs:
“Even now, it’s still easy to [cheat]. Even now. Let’s say I want to have an injection of a product that will last in my body for two days or one day. So I know that particular day I cannot be tested, because if I am, I’m screwed.
“So I put on my [USADA] whereabouts [app] that I’m traveling to freakin’ Antarctica or anywhere, somewhere that is believable, and then I come back two days after. That substance will stay in my body for a certain period of time, but the effect of it will last maybe a month. And now we’re talking about performance enhancing drugs — people, they misunderstand this.”
St-Pierre dove into just why the new steroids and other PEDs go beyond what the perceived boosts to muscle size and strength, endurance, and stamina. Today, he says, they give you boosts to your nervous system, react time, and mental acuity as well, making users a sort of superhuman due to increased reaction times:
“They go, ‘Well yeah, but it still doesn’t make a difference.’ Yes, it does make the difference in an athlete. And the reason, in the eighties and before, [PEDs gave] you more power, more stamina, more endurance.
“Now, man, with the technology, they have stuff that will change your reaction time, your confidence, your reset time. And this is a huge, huge application, man. If you play baseball or you’re fighting, you see the things coming, you have your reaction time, you’re sharper in the brain. What makes a guy athletic, it’s not his muscle. The reason why Usain Bolt ran faster — there’s many reasons why, but one of the main reasons is because his brain, his nervous system is faster.
“And if you make your nervous system better and more competent, you’re a better athlete. You’re a better fighter, you’re a better baseball player. You’re a better person, in a way. Of course that effect is limited, but there’s still the muscle memory thing that will last and it could last forever.”
As he recovers from injuries connected to his increased food intake he ate to move up a division, St-Pierre has been rumored for a bout with Nate Diaz at August 4’s UFC 227, a fight he’s shot down in the media.
GSP’s official return may be unknown, but his commitment to fighting against steroid use in MMA is stalwart. And even though there’s a highly-advanced testing regimen in place, he believes it’s still easy to cheat the system in the current day:
“It’s very hard to catch people. So like I said, it’s easy to take something,” St-Pierre said. “There is a always a chance that you get caught, but if I would do it, that’s how I would do it. I would pretend I’m going to Antarctica, get an injection, then I come back and I’m good.”
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