UFC middleweight Uriah Hall hit out at USADA agents and the dopers who have justified the efforts of the organization Hall claims to have been woken up on Monday morning for the purposes of a test – one which he clearly feels was unnecessary. Ur…
UFC middleweight Uriah Hall hit out at USADA agents and the dopers who have justified the efforts of the organization Hall claims to have been woken up on Monday morning for the purposes of a test – one which he clearly feels was unnecessary. Uriah Hall is not happy with USADA pic.twitter.com/QpYnZ9gP96 — Tom Taylor […]
Vitor Belfort vs. Urijah Hall has been made official for UFC St. Louis and a new bout has been confirmed. ESPN broke the news of Belfort vs. Hall being confirmed by the UFC. The two will meet inside the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri on Jan. 1…
Vitor Belfort vs. Urijah Hall has been made official for UFC St. Louis and a new bout has been confirmed. ESPN broke the news of Belfort vs. Hall being confirmed by the UFC. The two will meet inside the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri on Jan. 14 for a UFC Fight Night event. Jessica […]
In an effort to clean up the sport, today’s new and enhanced MMA landscape where the UFC has partnered with USADA to implement a world-class anti-doping regimen, drug test failures for performance-enhancing drugs have become much more commonplace and public in fighting than ever before. Perhaps it was to be expected as the sport continues […]
In an effort to clean up the sport, today’s new and enhanced MMA landscape where the UFC has partnered with USADA to implement a world-class anti-doping regimen, drug test failures for performance-enhancing drugs have become much more commonplace and public in fighting than ever before.
Perhaps it was to be expected as the sport continues to struggle with the program more than two years since its inception, but some high-profile failures have wrecked what would have otherwise been huge events, and some would even argue that the UFC’s partnership with USADA is actually doing more harm than good for the promotion.
That’s ridiculous, of course, as preventing a highly trained athlete from beating another athlete while under the benefit of PEDs is obviously a very good thing – yet there are signs that USADA’s timing and overall implementation could use some smoothing out of their own. Those details are another discussion for another time, however. With big UFC PPVs being ruined by drug test failures seemingly a regular occurrence these days, it brings to light how drug testing has affected events and even fighters’ careers both in the past and present.
We took a look back at the 10 most devastating drug test failures in MMA history, and the results found show just how impactful they have been on the still-young sport. Check them out:
Cris Cyborg – Strikeforce: Melendez vs. Masvidal:
The drug test that UFC women’s featherweight champ Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Justino failed for stanozolol after her thunderous 16-second TKO of Hiroko Yamanaka in December 2011 is arguably the most impactful on this list as it’s caused Cyborg to be followed by a reputation as a steroid user, and probably always will.
She was suspended for one year, stripped of her Strikeforce women’s featherweight belt, and her win over Yamanaka was changed to a no-contest. The failure was one of the main reasons (along with weight) why former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey wouldn’t fight Cyborg, and that topic was again brought up when original UFC 145-pound champion Germaine de Randamie refused to defend the belt against Cyborg, even if it could certainly be argued there were several other factors in play there.
It appeared Cyborg was headed into a disappointing squandering of her talent when she was popped for a USADA violation last year, but she was able to clear her name of that violation by claiming a prescribed substance she used during her foolish cuts down to 140 pounds for the UFC in 2016. For what it’s worth, she’s apparently complied with all of the rigorous requirements of the UFC’s anti-doping program with USADA (despite rumors otherwise), but her career will always be shrouded by her singular failure in Strikeforce.
Controversial MMA legend Vitor Belfort was supposedly set to retire following his decision win over fellow veteran Nate Marquardt at June’s UFC 212 from Brazil, but apparently, ‘The Phenom’ isn’t hanging up his gloves just yet. The former UFC champion took to Instagram this morning (Thurs., October 19, 2017) to reveal that he’s supposedly signed […]
Controversial MMA legend Vitor Belfort was supposedly set to retire following his decision win over fellow veteran Nate Marquardt at June’s UFC 212 from Brazil, but apparently, ‘The Phenom’ isn’t hanging up his gloves just yet.
The former UFC champion took to Instagram this morning (Thurs., October 19, 2017) to reveal that he’s supposedly signed a bout agreement to face explosive striker Uriah Hall at a yet-to-be-named UFC card on January 14, 2018.
A post shared by Vitor "The Phenom" Belfort (@vitorbelfort) on
I just signed my bout agreement for January 14th at UFC. I always looked for big challenges and in my last UFC fight it couldn’t be different… @uriahhall it’s a honor to share the cage with a such young and talented fighter. Thanks for accepting the fight!
Undoubtedly one of the greatest knockout artists in UFC history, the 40-year-old Belfort has garnered a lackluster 1-2(1) record in his last four bouts after his TKO loss to Kelvin Gastelum last March was changed to a no contest when Gastelum tested positive for marijuana metabolites.
All told, he’s lost three of his last four and four of his last six, with his only wins coming against fading stars in Dan Henderson and Marquardt. He’ll face a clearly difficult challenge in the flashy Hall, who recently rebounded from a three-fight losing streak of his own by defeating Krzysztof Jotko in a rousing comeback at September 16’s UFC Fight Night 116.
Both fighters still have the knockout power to end a fight with any shot despite their recent struggles, so this fight could produce some of the fireworks we’ve grown accustomed to witnessing in bouts involving “The Phenom.” Yet while it’s never up to the media or fans to decide when a fighter should hang up his or her gloves, it’s also fair to wonder if Belfort is playing with fire against the dangerous Hall.
According to long time UFC veteran Vitor Belfort, he has signed the bout agreements to fight Uriah Hall at the beginning of 2018. This coming from a post on his Instagram account this morning. Acabo de assinar o contrato para lutar no UFC dia 14 de Janeiro. Eu sempre busquei grandes desafios e na minha […]
According to long time UFC veteran Vitor Belfort, he has signed the bout agreements to fight Uriah Hall at the beginning of 2018. This coming from a post on his Instagram account this morning. Acabo de assinar o contrato para lutar no UFC dia 14 de Janeiro. Eu sempre busquei grandes desafios e na minha […]
This weekend’s (Sat., October 7, 2017) UFC 216 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, features yet another interim title fight when Tony Ferguson takes on Kevin Lee for the second-place strap in the feature bout. And it’s not even the first time that the promotion has tried to make a placeholder title for […]
This weekend’s (Sat., October 7, 2017) UFC 216 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, features yet another interim title fight when Tony Ferguson takes on Kevin Lee for the second-place strap in the feature bout.
And it’s not even the first time that the promotion has tried to make a placeholder title for the lightweight division that Conor McGregor has kept in limbo, as the promotion attempted to book Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov back at March’s UFC 209 only to see it fall apart when ‘The Eagle’ couldn’t make weight. Add that to the interim light heavyweight, middleweight, and featherweight belts that have been essentially manufactured in the last year-and-a-half, and you can easily surmise why the UFC is having one of their worst years ever in terms of pay-per-view (PPV) sales in 2017.
But it’s not just the UFC’s fault; no, champions holding out for ‘money fights’ and just outright picking and choosing their match-ups has lead to an era where it’s just hard for new UFC owners WME-IMG to build any momentum, and the days when champions defended their belts successfully – and often – in order to build the necessary rapport to become big stars seem to be absent from the sport right now (other than Demetrious Johnson, and we’ve seen how that has worked out). Champions aren’t what they used to be, and whether it’s bad luck or MMA simply evolving to create more parity, a true superstar is tough to come by right now.
What’s apparently not, however, is a fly-by-night champ who fails to live up to the hype and circumstance that carrying the gold brings. While it seems easy to find such fighters throughout the last few years of MMA, there have also been some truly bad champs in the older days of the UFC as well. These fighters from the present or past had enough to get to the mountaintop, so they are or were elite, but they just didn’t deliver when they got there.
Check out our 10 worst champions in UFC history:
Holly Holm:
A decorated multi-time world boxing champion, Holm came to the octagon amidst a ton of fanfare in 2015. After two incredibly lackluster decision wins over Raquel Pennington and Marion Reneau, Holm went on to shock the world when she kicked Ronda Rousey into oblivion at November 2015’s UFC 193 from Australia.
The MMA world was suddenly her oyster, but instead of holding out for a rematch with Rousey that legitimately could have been the biggest fight in UFC history, ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ decided to make her first title defense against Miesha Tate at UFC 196 the following March. After a tentative, safe four rounds in a fight she was probably winning, Holm was choked unconscious in the fifth round after Tate took her down.
From there, Holm went on to lose a one-sided decision to recent title contender Valentina Shevchenko in her next fight, but she still got a title shot nevertheless when she met Germaine de Randamie for the featherweight title in one of the worst fights of the year at February’s UFC 208. She lost via controversial decision, but has since rebounded by knocking out an overrated and ineffective Bethe Correia this June.
She never made any title defenses and has lost three of her last four fights, but Holm us rumored to be facing Cris Cyborg for the featherweight belt in her next bout. Welcome to today’s UFC, ladies and gentlemen.
