What if the NSAC Acted Sooner?

With the recent news that the Nevada State Athletic Commission will be monitoring steroid use closely through random drug testing, can we expect fighters to finally come clean? If so, will we still be waiting weeks after the fight to learn if anyone tested positive for banned substances? Considering that we are still not quite sure how often or how quickly the drug tests need to be performed, it’s still not a perfect solution. But, the bigger question remains – what if the NSAC, or the other athletic commissions, began the random drug testing months ago?

K-1 Dynamite brought an event over to the U.S. back in June of 2007. With this event, they also brought three controversial test failures. Former NFL football player Johnny Morton, knocked unconscious in less than a minute, refused to take a post-fight drug test. It didn’t really matter considering he failed his pre-fight test. Tim Persey tested positive for methamphetamine and there were also issues with the headlining fight. UFC veteran Royce Gracie was up against Pride “Gracie Hunter” Kazushi Sakuraba. After taking the fight with a decision win, Gracie was found to be using steroids prior to the bout. Gracie denied using the drugs, but his name has been tainted since the fiasco. This could have all been easily avoided if these fighters were randomly tested weeks, if not months, before K-1 finalized their production.

Now let’s go back to just before UFC 73. Sean Sherk and Hermes Franca were slated to fight for the lightweight championship on July 7th, 2007 in Sacramento, California. Both fighters tested positive after Sherk pulled off the decision win. Franca admitted to using drugs, but Sherk remained adamant that he never purposely used any type of steroids. This fight and the fiasco that followed could have been averted (at the expense of the UFC, of course) with the use of random drug testing prior to the fight. Would either fighter have made it into the arena if the CSAC had decided to use these random drug tests? We’ll never know, but the outcome of the fight could have certainly changed for the better. Thanks to Sherk, B.J. Penn is now the lightweight champion with his recent UFC 80 submission win over Joe Stevenson. Stephan Bonnar, removed from the cage for 9 months after testing positive for Boldenone in 2006, returned to fight Mike Nickels on this card. Bonnar could have avoided spending his fine and suspension as well.

Dont’ forget about Melvin Guillard and his cocaine problems during UFC 69. Phil Baroni also tested positive during his Strikeforce bout against Frank Shamrock. Anthony Torres tested positive after UFC 75 and there are plenty more, but the facts are clear; the athletic commissions have waited too long to begin random drug testing for MMA fighters. Because of this, MMA organizations have been given a bad name for no reason while the athletic commissions are showing positive drug use left and right. Don’t forget that fighters were not taking drug testing seriously and simply cycling off, or temporarily stopping, their drug use before fights, but still recklessly risking the loss of income for up to a full year. Let’s just hope that Nevada has set a precedent for the other commissions to begin taking control of the obvious drug problem in MMA.

We’ll also see how the UFC handles the random drug testing – will they book more events outside of Nevada or will they trust their fights to be drug free? It will be interested to see how this pans out int he second half of 2008. As for now, drug use may be on its way out of MMA – a good thing for the sport indeed.