Dana White On Sonnen’s Failed Drug Test: TRT Was A Nightmare, Both Sides Are To Blame

A massive bombshell was dropped on the UFC today when it was found that Chael Sonnen had failed a Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) random drug test and was subsequently forced out of his UFC 175 bout with Vitor Belfort.

UFC president Dana White promptly appeared on FOX Sports Live to address the findings, noting that it would have been impossible for all the fighters using testosterone-replacement therapy to stop using the controversial treatment cold turkey without some side effects:

“I’m not shocked by the reaction. My reaction isn’t shock. This has been lingering, this stuff was legal. TRT was legal, then the Nevada State Athletic Commission said, ‘It’s illegal now, it’s gotta go away,’ but there’s going to be effects of stopping this thing cold turkey. It just doesn’t work that way.”

White went on to state that no one in the UFC is using TRT and that he’s glad it’s gone:

“Nobody is on it. Just to clear the air here, nobody is on TRT. And, we only had five guys out of over 500 that were on TRT. And it was absolutely legal, and then the Athletic Commission changed the ruling and said, “It is now a banned substance, you cannot take it.’ So there’s only really two of our big stars that are still dealing with the effects of TRT – it’s Chael Sonnen and Vitor Belfort.

This thing has been bad from day one, I wish that the Commission never let anybody use TRT, and when it went away, they didn’t do a very good job of figuring out how to get these guys off it. You don’t just go cold turkey; there’s things that they have to do. If you don’t take these estrogen blockers, you know, they can get side effects from it.”

This is between Chael and the Commission, but the rules should have been ruled out better when they said, “That’s it; it’s over,” because here’s the big problem, too: is that even when it was legal, the Athletic Commission and all the doctors were never on the same page with the ratios and all these other things; it was always a nightmare, so it had to go away, I’m glad it’s gone, and we’re just dealing with the aftermath.”

White seems to think that both the NSAC and Sonnen are to blame, because the rules were not clearly stated and therefore, not followed:

“Both are at fault. I think the Nevada State Athletic Commission could have laid it out better for how they were going to end this thing. What would be banned and what wouldn’t be banned in the guys coming down off it, but again, it’s a matter of they’re not very educated on TRT.

 It’s the thing that’s made this whole thing impossible anyway, and it’s Chael’s fault too, because Chael should have called the Athletic Commission and said, ‘This is what my doctor told me to do to come down off this stuff, so here’s what I’m taking.”

When asked if today’s findings certify the allegations that MMA is becoming a dirty sport with widespread PED use, White responded:

“No, absolutely not. You know, for us, we’ve been the guys to take drug testing head on. We’ve worked with the Athletic Commissions to take out of competition testing. We are paying big money for some of these guys to be tested.

Jon Jones wanted Glover and him to be tested all the way through the lead-up to their last fight and we paid for that, too. There’s nobody out there that’s doing more for testing than we are.

And this whole thing that was blown out of proportion by the stories that ESPN where they said that these exemptions were rampant throughout mixed martial arts, there were only five guys out of 500 that had testosterone exemptions.”

ESPN was quick to post a story about the fighters that had received therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) under the Zuffa banner, and it was considerably more than five.

As for Sonnen, he spoke up on FOX Sports Live to state that his instance is much different than that of Wanderlei Silva, who was forced out a bout with Sonnen after refusing to acquiesce to the same drug test that Sonnen failed:

“These are radically different situations. One, a person ran from a drug test in an attempt to hide. I came out and I was as transparent as I could be. I’ve given a number of interviews where I talked about this and I disclosed this in every way that I can. I’m also not on fight night. I hid nothing, I’m still not hiding it. You ask me how this got in my system, I’ll tell ya, Mike, because I put it there. I took these substances, but they’re not illegal, they’re not performance enhancing. And why the Commissions will allow certain medicines outside of competition and not others we’re going to have to talk to them about, but these are not anabolics that have any outcome on sport.”

Sonnen’s response is sure to illicit its fair share of doubters, but one thing is clear: the NSAC’s random drug testing worked on not only one, but two prominent instances, a fact that should spur the UFC into implementing random drug testing in MMA. It may be costly, but it certainly won’t come at the price of the sport’s legitimacy, which is what repeated failures for banned substances are costing the promotion.