The way this story was first presented, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President, Dana White, made it sound like some random drug test result popped up out of nowhere and showed a residual trace of Turinabol, the performance-enhancing drug that got Jon Jones suspended in summer of 2017.
As it turns out, those “atypical findings” started as far back as August.
Then came another positive result in September, before a battery of tests in both October and November returned nothing. At that point, Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) was brought into the fold and it became a roll of the dice.
“I think it was December 6th, [USADA] sent a letter to us and they sent a letter to the Nevada state athletic commission saying, ‘Just you’re aware, over the last six months, early in this six months we’ve seen a reemergence of this long-term in Jon’s samples,’” UFC Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance, Jeff Novitzky, told Joe Rogan (via MMA Fighting).
“That’s all good, Nevada gets this. I talk with them, they’re like, ‘Whoa, this is concerning, but we don’t see anything in our jurisdiction here, so I certainly hope that no subsequent tests show up positive because that could be an issue.’” Novitzky said. “And sure enough, USADA collects a sample from Jon on 12/9, they expedited the results because they knew a fight was coming up and they do that now when fights are close or the collections are done close to a fight, and here he pulses back up to between 60 and 80 picograms.”
To recap:
Aug. 9 (negative)
Aug. 29 (positive 8 picograms)
Sept. 18 (positive 19 picograms)
Sept. 21 (negative)
Oct. 2 (negative)
Oct. 11 (negative)
Nov. 14 (negative)
Dec. 9 (positive 60-80 picograms)
The final drug test was enough to make NSAC stop and ask, WTF? And like the rest of us, the commission wants to know more about these results, why they are returning positive in increasingly greater numbers, and why levels of Turinabol — however small — are still showing up
Right now, we haven’t gotten a satisfactory explanation. There has been a lot of bro-science and comparisons to salt, but I think UFC will say anything at this point to make sure it closes out 2018 with its UFC 232 event on Dec. 29, recently relocated to Inglewood, California.
And please buy the pay-per-view (PPV) so that we can help White pay his taxes.