Lorenzo Fertitta Is Disappointed With George St-Pierre’s Comments On Drug Testing
Former UFC Welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre raised a lot of eyebrows with his comments about the UFC. GSP stated that his former employers are a ‘Monopoly’ and a company that punishes fighters for speaking their minds. Big accusations from one of the UFC’s former marquee stars.
St-Pierre also revealed that the UFC policy on drug testing helped him in his decision to step away from the sport in the wake of UFC 167. CEO Lorenzo Fertitta did not take too kindly to these comments, as he spoke with Yahoo Sports:
“We’ve always had an open line of communication with him and I’d like to know why he feels that way. “It was extremely disappointing to hear Georges make those comments because I don’t think any organization has embraced drug testing as we have,”
When you consider that a lot of eastern MMA promotions don’t even have drug testing, it seems that Fertitta has a point. GSP always wanted WADA/VADA style drug testing, and even offered to pay for his opponents testing before.
GSP was left with egg on his face when his proposed WADA testing with Johny Hendricks fell through, and Dana White described the situation as ‘weird and stupid’. Fertitta continued:
“We have not only agreed to pay when the commission has said it wants to do enhanced testing, we’ve encouraged it. We have no problem with testing. When we serve as the commission [in areas out of the country where there is no commission], we test everyone on the card so we are thorough and there can be no claims of bias.”
“Whatever a commission would want us to do in terms of testing, we would embrace it. We’ll do as many as they want. I think perhaps Georges’ people didn’t communicate to him in detail everything we’d do as they tried to arrange the testing for the fight with him and Johny.”
There seems to be a lot of confusion and miscommunication in relation to this story. GSP is claiming that the UFC is not making sure their fighters are tested properly, and his employers have responded by saying they do more than enough. The question is who should we believe?
If this really is the deciding factor in St-Pierre’s pseudo-retirement, could this whole thing have been avoided?
