Everyone knows the story of what happened to the main event for UFC on Versus 4, Nate Marquardt was to headline the card and make his welterweight debut against Rick Story, but medical clearance issues for Marquardt derailed everything.
Luckily, the main event’s replacement fight which was a heavyweight fight between Cheick Kongo and Pat Barry was probably one of the most exciting fights of 2011 and involved a comeback by Kongo that will probably go down as the biggest comeback in the history of the sport.
After the news was broken that Marquardt would not be fighting, Dana White tweeted his followers with a video stating that Marquardt would never return to the UFC.
Of course there has been a ton of speculation as to what exactly happened with Marquardt and the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission, but nothing was really answered until the fighter’s interview on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwaniearlier today. Even after the interview things still seem unclear.
Marquardt and his manager Lex McMahon explained why he was denied the opportunity to fight, and it had to do with having higher than normal testosterone levels caused by hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Fighters are allowed to undergo HRT, and Dan Henderson is an example of one fighter who has undergone the treatment and never had any issues with the athletic commissions because of it.
The one stipulation with HRT is that when a fighter fights, testosterone levels need to be within the normal range, and the fighters need to submit proof of this prior to the fight.
Marquardt who worked with his own doctor as opposed to an endocrinologist made the mistake of following his doctors advice three weeks out from the fight and took a testosterone injection. In the eight weeks prior to this last injection, he hadn’t had any in order to satisfy the New Jersey State Athletic Commission’s request that their endocrinologist confirm his depleted hormone levels.
The problem for Marquardt being that three weeks wasn’t long enough to get his testosterone levels back down to normal.
“The week of the fight I requested several tests, each test showed that the levels were going down. I took a test on weigh-in day, and it was still above the range the athletic commission was going to let me fight.” Marquardt told Ariel Helwani of the MMA Hour.
At that point, the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission made the decision to deny Marquardt a chance to fight on Saturday.
Obviously, Marquardt, unable to honor his contract to fight Rick Story didn’t get his money for fighting and is currently on indefinite suspension in the State of Pennsylvania.
Marquardt and his Manager admitted to being largely at fault for what happened. They know now that he should have been working with a specialist as oppose to the doctor he was using.
The day after the event, he was tested again and results showed that he was back within the normal range, and after talking with the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commissions executive director Greg Sirb, Marquardt says he hopes to have his suspension lifted on Wednesday.
The one thing Marquardt and his manager McMahon were adamant about was the that Marquardt never tried to hide anything and was open about everything.
“Nate was hiding nothing, he made every effort to comply. When he found out his results were high, he ran out of time.” McMahon told Helwani.
Now, after the interview with Helwani it makes sense as to why Marquardt wasn’t allowed to fight this Saturday; it couldn’t really be any clearer.
What isn’t clear now is why Marquardt has been fired and banned from ever competing in the UFC again by UFC president Dana White.
Marquardt isn’t the first fighter in the UFC to have had issues with an athletic commission over HRT.Former number one middleweight contender Chael Sonnen had his license to fight in the state of California suspended after his loss to middleweight champion Anderson Silva last August.
Sonnen told the California State Athletic Commission executive director George Dodd that he was taking something. The commission couldn’t call off the fight with Silva because a verbal admission isn’t grounds for a suspension; the test results are required.
Sonnen didn’t try following the correct protocol like Marquardt did, he wasn’t open and honest with everyone and he didn’t file the right paperwork prior to his fight.
In fact, Sonnen not only got himself in trouble with the California State Athletic Commission, but he also lost his license to fight in the state of Nevada and got himself on the bad side of a Nevada State Athletic Commission executive Keith Kizer.
Sonnen claimed he had a discussion with Kizer about HRT and Kizer denies it ever having happened.
“After I’d denied that we’d spoken, even saying I’d never spoken to him [Chael Sonnen] in my life, he was on Inside MMA and they confronted him about it and he left the impression that we’d talked.” Kizer told Pro MMA Radio. “When I got face-to-face with Chael, his explanation totally changed but it still made no sense. He finally explained something about his manager but it was all really strange. It was a really weird thing. Sometimes when you dig a hole, you have to keep digging.” Kizer continued.
To make matters worse, Sonnen was found guilty of mortgage fraud earlier this year, and although it is a separate event from his issues around HRT, it certainly doesn’t speak well for Sonnen as a human being and amabassador of the sport.
Despite the tactics Sonnen employed to dance around his HRT issue, it was pretty clear that if he was able to get back his license to fight in the state of Nevada then he would be coaching opposite Michael Bisping for the fourteenth installment of the Ultimate Fighter.
Unfortunately for Sonnen, he was denied his licenses.
UFC President Dana White was probed on the possible reprimanding of Chael Sonnen after what happened and MMAweekly put up footage of his response.
In the footage, White describes what the commission does to guys when they are caught for issues with their drug tests.
“So the government will come in, test the guys [and say] you [the fighter] just got busted for taking whatever it is you were taking. Whether it was marijuana or some illegal substance and here is what I [The Commission] am going to do. I am going to take away your ability to work for a year, you can’t make a living for a year, then on top of that I am gonna make you pay a fine from this fight that you just had.” White explained.
White went on to explain how it would be ludicrous for him to start handing out fines and suspensions of his own because he feels the fighters have already paid their dues by serving out the sentencing laid upon them by the commission.
“They’ve [the fighters] already been punished alright. Their down and out, what am I gonna do? Come over and kick them in the face? I mean what else is there to do? Now I am gonna fine you [the fighter], and I am gonna suspend you for another three months? It doesn’t work that way in the fight business, the government is the commissioner really.”
White also made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to get involved in the situation Sonnen was having with the commissions.
“Chael’s always been great you know and I don’t want to get involved in this thing.” White said.
From what this writer has seen unfold thus far, it appears as if what Marquardt did wasn’t any worse than what Sonnen did.
The only differences between the two situations being that Sonnen was able to fight Silva because he didn’t declare anything about his HRT until he was forced to submit a sample for a random screening test. Marquardt on the other hand was up front and open with everyone and was forced to submit paperwork showing that his pre-fight testosterone levels were within the normal range and since they weren’t he was pulled from his fight.
Had Marquardt approached the HRT situation like Sonnen did he probably would have fought Story and then gone through a situation similar to Sonnen’s and ultimately kept his job with the UFC.
So what is the moral to the story here?
Fighters shouldn’t be open about their HRT with the commissions? That way they get to fight and if a random drug test comes up positive they will pay the fine and serve a suspension and be welcomed back to the UFC because they have paid their dues?
However, if a fighter tries to comply with the Commission and maintains open communication the whole time, but ultimately can’t fight then that’s it? even if the commission lifts the suspension four days later and doesn’t fine the fighter, the UFC will end their contract anyways because had they lied at least they would have fought in the event?
It doesn’t seem realistic to think the UFC wants to promote these ideologies to their fighters. This is in large part the reason why there appears to be missing pieces to the puzzle in Marquardt’s case.
It’s tough to say if anyone will really know the real story simply because Marquardt has said his piece already and due to privacy laws everybody else that was in the loop are forced to stay quiet on the issue.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Marquardt going forward, but if anything the past year has shown, is that there needs to be some solid framework in place for dealing with HRT because the situations Sonnen and Marquardt found themselves in shows that not all the fighters understand how it works.
Of course there are many people who probably feel that HRT is just a loophole to cheat, and there are plenty of strong arguments for taking that standpoint. However, whether HRT should be allowed or not is a moot point; the issue at hand is that there needs to be consistency and understanding between the fighters, the commissions and the promoter as to what is allowed, what is not and how to do it properly.
Leon Horne has been contributing to Bleacher Report for three years now. He focuses mainly on mixed martial arts, but he has also written about tennis, football and hockey. Just send him a message if you want to talk sports or discuss any opportunities. You can follow him on Twitter for updates: 
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