After a tainted supplement took him out of competition for a year, JDS can relate to Josh Barnett’s feelings.
Junior Dos Santos is coming back from what has turned into a year plus vacation from UFC competition, compliments of USADA. The drug testing organization nailed him for the diuretic Hydrochlorothiazide, only to discover several months later that his claims of tainted supplements were legit. A single Brazilian supplement company was responsible for the suspensions of Dos Santos, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, and Marco Rogerio de Lima.
As we’ve learned from Josh Barnett’s case, if you fight your way to arbitration you can have your entire suspension wiped in exchange for a reprimand. In this case, all three Brazilians accepted USADA’s compromise of six months suspension, time already served, and a return to action.
That’s allowed Dos Santos to set up his next fight against former WSOF champ Blagoy Ivanov on July 14th, but it doesn’t make him feel all that safe due to the amount of time it took USADA to determine his innocence. Junior spoke with MMA Fighting on the issue.
”In my mind, they would quickly see that I had no fault and would clear me to fight again pretty quickly, especially because of how much of the diuretic they found, not even a performance-enhancing drug, and it being hydrochlorothiazide, a cheap and inefficient diuretic,” he said. “If I wanted to hide something, I would have taken something way worse.”
“I have a fight now, and every time [USADA] comes, I try to show them everything I’m taking. I show everything, because I’m kind of afraid. I don’t know. It happened once when I did nothing. God forbid it happens again, so I get scared. That bothers me a lot.”
”I actually tried to stop using supplements, but it’s absurd,” he continued. “It’s impossible. We need this. If you say an athlete doesn’t need supplementation, that he can get everything through food, you’re wrong. I don’t know about other sports, but our sport is extremely hard, it’s extremely tough. You can’t train twice a day, tough training sessions that are devastating for your body. … Especially for a guy like me, a heavyweight, because it takes longer for your body to recover. It takes longer for your body to absorb all the [punishment]. It’s not simple. You can’t just not use supplements.”
Hopefully USADA has learned something out of this case and Josh Barnett’s. But it often seems like the wheels turn so slowly that regardless of your innocence, you’re going to be sitting out for a year. You can read Junior Dos Santos’ entire interview with MMA Fighting here.