Lorenzo Fertitta Says He Is On The Same Page As GSP Regarding Drug Testing

With a young and ever-growing sport like MMA, there are always going to be forks in the road. Merely two decades since it’s inception, ‘cage fighting’ has moved in to the realms of mainstream sports under the new moniker of mixed martial arts and is beginning to be globally accepted. Combat sports as a whole suffer from many derogatory problems, and none are more prevalent in MMA than drug abuse.

With the TRT ban now in full swing, the biggest promotion in MMA will hopefully be able to pave the way to a cleaner, safer future for the sport. This ideal hasn’t come without its costs though, as long-time welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre vacated his title and semi-retired himself due to his strong beliefs about drug testing by the UFC and other, more worldwide agencies.

Light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones and his UFC 172 opponent Glover Teixeira recently underwent a random drug test for their title bout, and it it’s starting to look like the promotion is really getting on board with the idea. Check out what UFC executive Lorenzo Fertitta had to say about talks with the former welterweight kingpin GSP, Sports Illustrated had the scoop:

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“We had a very, very good conversation about what his concerns were,” said the executive. “We kind of got all of that out on the table. I think it was pretty clear to him, hopefully, that we embrace it,” he said. “We want to make sure that we have the highest standard of any sport. So I think we’re on the same page as Georges.”

The sad truth about the old days of mixed martial arts is that most of the original warriors were totally juiced up gorillas. In a way that made a lot of events way more fun to watch; but the reality of steroid abuse, and the dangers of letting these guys loose on each other far outweighs the enjoyment of watching a good old-fashioned night of scraps between cranked up, door-smashing animals.

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Fertitta then went on to discuss the difficulty of getting stringent drug testing implemented:

“We’ve always tried to do whatever we can to embrace and encourage the commissions to test as much as they possibly can,” said Fertitta. “Unfortunately for most commissions, they’re restrained from a budgetary standpoint. They just don’t have the resources to handle random testing because there’s a lot more that goes into how it’s done. In order for the program to be successful, it truly needs to be random and it needs to be pretty in-depth.”

“We have nothing to do with the testing other than they send us a bill to pay for it. That’s it,” he said. “It’s all done third party, all done the right way. They get the results sent directly to them and then they deal with the situation, the fighter. It’s out of our hands. We’re trying to work with various commissions now to figure out how we can put systems in place to ensure that all of these guys are tested,” he said. “Tested randomly, tested out of competition, in competition, every which way they can be.”

Perhaps this is the start of a good 2014 for MMA, because so far it has been mostly negative media; especially on the UFC’s part. It looks like if there wasn’t anyone taking notice while ‘Rush’ was champion, he surely helped to turn a few heads with his public tantrum. Who said stamping your feet won’t get you anywhere?