FanPost

Drug testing is the biggest threat to the UFC

Drug testing is the greatest threat to the UFC. Increased random drug testing is a worse proposition than a fighters union, believe me.

The only fault here is on the professional sports culture. You could never convince me that the athletes in MMA are using more than any other sport out there. I agree with Dana that they are the most regulated sport out there. From a business perspective, why should one sport be treated than the others. If the stars and main attractions in any other sport were subjected to as strict testing, how would that affect business? Sales at the gates? Bagautinov gets 1 year. Well how about a star from say, baseball, gets taken out of a season by comparison because of a banned substance?

People say MMA is more vicious and serious because you are hurting the other opponent and as a result, there should be an increased testing procedure. Fine and dandy except if you're the one in the MMA fight business and have to fill cards with fighters and market cards.

Perhaps strict testing will eventually clean up sports, but until it does, it's a huge liability especially for star dependent sports like fighting. A league can miss a star but when you build up a card and something falls through? Look no further than Sonnen, Wanderlei and Belfort.

We shouldn't assume that all fighters use PED's, but most of us aren't fighters either. We aren't pro athletes and in that inner circle to know what really goes on. We can however read what GSP says and we can see some recent test results. I'm pretty damn sure if you applied the same tests to any other pro sports league you would see the same results.

It's not the blame game here. The UFC is overly scrutinized and if new and or random tests are going to be implemented, then as fans, we need to prepare ourselves for changes to cards. Sadly we may need to wait for test results to be released before we can really claim a victor. If you're running the UFC and you have Bagautinov failing a drug test after taking the belt from Johnson? That's awkward. The Sonnen situation was awkward.

There should be a growing concern within the UFC brass about this situation. The problem is that it's out of their control. Something that's bad for business and is out of one's control is bad news. The only hope is for fighters to see others getting caught, seeing the punishments, and realizing that they need to start weening immediately. If for example title fights required random testing, then it's out there for everyone to see. If they will fight for the title, then no more PED's. To be a champ you will need to be clean, so wouldn't logic say you better start competing without the PED's now? Afterall, it becomes a dependency. That means there is a big physical and mental adjustment required to ween off PED's.