The Joe Rogan Experience - #685 - Jeff Novitzky

Episode Date: August 18, 2015

Jeff Novitzky is the VP of athlete health and performance for the UFC.

Ah, we're live. All right, Jeff, thank you very much, man. Appreciate you coming on here. It was very cool talking to you in Brazil, and even though it was a very short conversation, I learned a lot, and I got very fired up about this podcast. Awesome, man. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you, and thank you for all the stuff you've done. For folks who don't know, you're the guy who essentially took down Lance Armstrong, or at least made the case, or solidify? I mean, how would you describe it? Yeah. I mean, I was involved in the investigation. You know, it was a case run by

Department of Justice out of Los Angeles. I was one of the case agents on it. So I was associated with it. That's one of the things that's creepy about it is that the government was going after bike riders. It's like, wouldn't you think that they've got some really important shit to do? Like, I think that bothered a lot of people about the baseball thing with Barry Bonds and with Mark McGuire and all that Sammy Sosa stuff. It's like, why is the fucking Congress involved? And it seems. Yeah. You know, uh, you know, on one hand, these were laws that, you know, the agencies I was with was, were tasked to investigate, uh, on the other hand, in terms of importance,

you know, I was on a personal level. I looked at the message that was being sent to the youth, not only of this country, but of the world, and that it became a fact that in, you know, the mid to late 90s, steroid use was so pervasive in sports that, you know, kids are smart these days. They're, you know, on the internet, they know what's going on, that you really did see it trickling down to kids, you know, in high school. And at some point, if you wanted to take that sport far enough, you ultimately had to make

that decision. Hey, do I want to keep going? And if I do, I'm going to have to make a decision whether or not, you know, I'm going to use these things. So I think, you know, the, I think about the number of conversations that probably happened around dinner table between parents and kids because of these cases got to be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And that alone right there, you know, I think would justify the resources that were spent. Defendants in those cases, it was always overblown in terms of the resources that the government did spend doing it. You know, you heard often the Barry Bonds case was 50, $55 million case. It really wasn't. You know, and that case involved not steroid use, but lying in front of a grand jury. So it transcended steroid use.

It was about lying and telling the truth and misusing the justice system. I've had agents all across the country on non-steroid related cases come up to me and say, hey, thanks for that case, because we can use that as an example when we go out and interview witnesses or witnesses come before a grand jury that, look, you need to tell the truth. And if you don't, look what can happen. The government went after Barry Bonds or certainly will go after you. And when that truth starts being told like that, our legal and justice system starts working. When it doesn't, it breaks down. So it wasn't $55 million. How much was actually spent around?

You know, it's funny. 49? Yeah. 49? Yeah. 49.50. No, not even close. Some media outlet did a freedom of information request with the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco who prosecuted the case. So this was after the case was done. So they put the dollar figures together with the trial costs, not necessarily the entire investigation, but the trial itself, I think it was less than $100,000. And the trial costs, not necessarily the entire investigation, but the

trial itself, I think it was less than $100,000. And the comment was, geez, this is the most cost efficient, high profile trial that's probably ever happened. But that's not a full account of all the money that was spent trying to bring him down. It's not. And again, this wasn't trying to bring anybody down. This was a situation where he went before a grand jury, didn't tell the truth. His grand jury transcript, ironically enough, was leaked by the Balco, one of the Balco attorneys, defense attorneys. And so the public all of a sudden got to read exactly what he said in there. all of a sudden got to read exactly what he said in there. It was obvious that he at least was obstructing, if not outright not telling the truth. And so I think the Justice Department was faced with, what do we do now? What kind of message are we sending if we don't prosecute this guy? It sends a message that far transcends steroid use in sports. There's thousands of witnesses every day that appear before grand juries.

So it was almost a necessity to have to do it. It wasn't about steroids, but it was about steroids. Because the only reason why he was there was questioning him about steroids. So it essentially was. And that's how a lot of people feel, like, when it comes to, like, organized crime. Like, didn't they bust Al Capone on tax evasion? Like, that's how a lot of people get caught. They get caught lying while they're in the middle of committing a crime.

But it's really about the original crime, wasn't it? Well, they did. I mean, that's why he was brought in there. But when he was brought in, it was made very clear that, look, he's not prosecuting you for using steroids. He was given immunity, actually, showing that as long as you tell the truth, you're not a target in this thing. You're just a witness.

So tell the truth. But he was never convicted for using steroids, right? And wasn't he off the hook even as far as the investigation goes? He never did any time and was he even penalized? How was he penalized other than having to go through trials and spend a lot of money? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, after he was convicted in the jury trial, the judge sentenced him to house arrest. But I tell you, I bet he's got a sweet house. It's not really that bad. Can you watch TV when you're in the house arrest? I think you can. That seems a little ridiculous. I like being at home.

But I tell you, even in a situation like that, I tell people all the time, man, being under investigation to begin with, going through a public trial with, you know, potentially embarrassing things about you. Man, that's rough. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, notwithstanding what the ultimate sentence was. But the most embarrassing thing was that he did what everybody knew he did, which was take steroids to get bigger. I mean, that was the most embarrassing thing about it all, right? It wasn't anything else. It was personal. I mean, there was more things.

There was ex-girlfriends that were called it, that went on the stand. I saw him shoot it right in his ass. He got bigger right in front of my eyes. The thing that people have a problem with is that there's legit problems in the world, and they're chasing people for hitting a ball with a stick better. Baseball is boring as shit. And the best part about baseball is when they hit home runs. And people are saying, well, finally, these guys are doing something that makes them hit more

home runs. And it turns out that there's something involves science and chemicals, and we don't like it. So we're going to come down on these people. We're going to spend a lot of taxpayers' money. We're going to bring these people before Congress, and Joe Biden's going to get all goofy about it. That's how a lot of people felt about it. Well, I think any time you could spend resources on something that's going to directly affect the youth of society and sending them a message about what is right and what is wrong. You know, having grown up in a sporting household myself, three daughters, which, you know, played sports growing up. household myself, three daughters, which, you know, played sports growing up. And I look at kind of what I went through and what my daughters have gone through and the life's lessons that you learn in sports that transcend sports and learn how to work under pressure, how to work, you know, as a team, how to individually succeed. There's so many great lessons to be learned. The health

aspects of, you know, being healthy and working out, all of a sudden you introduce into that equation, number one, breaking the rules. And so there's, you know, the ethics to look at surrounding it. And number two, you know, ultimately there can be risk and health consequences with using these things, especially if you're young doing that. So, you know, again, going back to the message, I think that it sent to our kids and to parents with where I think society was going back then with the pervasive use of drugs in sports, I think was a positive one that's going to benefit people positively. And I think it did, it did have an impact. The landscape has changed in the last 10 or 15 years. Yeah, I think you're definitely right about that.

And that's the most compelling aspect of it as far as the argument for chasing it down is if kids are growing up and the kid says, hey, I want to be a professional baseball player, how many people are going to tell that kid, look, you've got to take steroids. If you want to get into a good college, if you want to get a bunch of recruiters looking at you, you've got to start making some noise right now now and the way to do it is this stuff right here squirt that stuff in there the amount of conversations i had with young athletes baseball players definitely cyclists where they talked about that moment that all their life growing up you know they aspired to be a professional and then they got to a certain point in baseball. It was, you know, minor league, maybe triple A and cycling. It was, hey, about to

get signed on to a pro team going over to Europe and realizing, oh shit, to go any further, I'm seeing what's going on around me here. I'm going to have to make that decision. I have had, I can't even count the number of athletes I've had sitting across the table from me recounting those days when those decisions were made that were bawling like little babies talking about that. And I think a lot of it was guilt in terms of the decision that they ultimately did make, but just the pressure of coming to that moment, either giving up your lifelong dream or, hey, kid, if you want to go further, this is what you got to do. And in some instances, you know, kind of rebuffing that and not doing it. And then after a year realizing, shit, I really do need to do this or I can't go any further. I've had many, many of those stories told to me. Yeah, it is really crazy that sports like professional cycling, especially,

we talked about this when I saw you in Brazil, that I had a buddy that was a professional cycler for a while. And he told me this long before the Lance Armstrong stuff went down, before he got caught. He said, they're all doing it. He said, you can't compete at that high level. He said, not only that, but the doctor that he talked to said, you could make an argument that it's actually more dangerous to compete in that sport without the drugs. And then I said, well, what kind of a fucking sport is this, man? Like, this is crazy.

Then after you and I had this conversation, I started looking into the Tour de France times. We spoke about this briefly in Brazil, that the guy who was winning the Tour de France, I don't even know what his name is, he was breaking records that were set by guys that were on drugs. And we were trying to figure out how the fuck that's possible. Yeah, it's a bit suspicious.

A bit? I mean, these are hyperhuman levels of performance. And he's beating guys that we know were the elite of the elite that were also on steroids, were also on EPO. Yeah, the cycling, I think we talked about this in terms of level of sophistication versus all the sports that I saw where drug use was prevalent was by far at the top, where, you know, they were investing in machines to bring along with them as they were competing and traveling to test their blood every night to make sure that their levels were within reason and wouldn't pop on a drug test or a biological passport test.

In a biological passport, if I'm not mistaken, what that means is, like, say if we test you and we get your levels, that we can test you on a regular basis and you have to stay within a consistent range. Is that the idea? Yeah, that's pretty much it, and it's something we're using in So, you know, the more tests you have, the better you're able to read it. But over a longitudinal study of your blood and urine markers, science and studies have shown you're going to have normal variances. You know, each human being will have a normal variance. How does that factor in with overtraining? And a lot of these athletes are overtrained, and it's a consistent aspect of MMA camps, is that guys are just really breaking themselves

down, doing two and three a day, wrestling, strength and conditioning, kickboxing. It's just, you know, sometimes you see these guys' testosterone levels, they come in, they're just wrecked, and they're mid-camp. Yeah, and that's definitely, you know, I'm not a scientist, but in talking to scientists who read these, they take that into consideration. I think the overtraining, you would tend to see some of those variances on the lower side, and that may be normal, but when they're reading these biological passports and you see some way on the lower side, and then all of a sudden you see way one on the higher side, then it begins to raise questions about what's going on. on the lower side, and then all of a sudden you see way one on the higher side, then, you know,

it begins to raise questions about what's going on. Now, a lot of times a biological passport will just lead to more intelligent testing or targeted testing. It may not necessarily be, hey, this person's definitely using, but based on these variances, something may be suspiciously going on here. Let's test this guy or guy or girl, you know, more hone in on suspicions like that. And really the, the most accurate tests are blood tests. Is that the case? Blood are the most accurate, correct? There, you were, there's the other thing you were telling me about when we were in Brazil that I thought was fascinating was that there, there, there's a new type of testosterone that they're making testosterone from yams, right?

Correct. And that now they're doing it through animals? Yeah, they are. So, you know, one of the most accurate tests now to use is called the carbon isotope ratio test. And what that's able to do is differentiate between natural testosterone, which all men and women have in their body, and foreign testosterone, because there's a different carbon atom in that testosterone because it's made from a plant instead of an animal there's now you know at least in research supply

companies I don't think it's approved for use but there's animal based testosterone floating around which has the potential to possibly defeat a carbon isotope ratio test because it has the same carbon atom as natural testosterone does. Is there any hesitation in talking about these things because you worry that you might educate cheaters? No, I don't think so. I think, you know, I've always found that, you know, your credibility rises when you're forthright about what's going on. And because on the other side of things, you know, the science is, you know, looking at these things and always coming up with new tests. I think something that's, in fact,

I just read it today, and we do this in our program as well, is there was in cycling, they will freeze samples, both urine and blood, and keep them for years at a time. And cycling just recently went back and retested some of the frozen urine and blood from a few years ago for a new drug, which they had just developed a test for. And they were able to catch a guy from a couple years ago that had used it. We're going to do that in UFC as well. So even if, you know, there's a new drug out there that, you know, scientists, chemists are saying there's no test for. Potentially, a couple years down the line, when there is a test for it, we'd have the ability to go back and test that. Now, maybe that athlete's no longer with the UFC or no longer competing at all anymore.

But, you know, there's still reputation and legacy at stake. Wow, that's crazy. So the UFC's going to have, like, a giant meat locker filled with old blood and pee? Yeah, the laboratories will have that, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. So the UFC is going to have like a giant meat locker filled with old blood and pee? Yeah, the laboratories will have that, yeah. Wow, that's fascinating stuff. Well, there's a chain of evidence issue with that, isn't there? Just sitting around in some sort of a lab somewhere for years? Yeah, there will be secure freezers where there is a chain of custody that goes along with each sample.

So outside that freezer will be the paperwork. Arm guards. A lot of laboratories are very secure laboratories. Yeah. I've tried to get in them before. They're tough. You're signing off your life to get in one of those things. But, no, so the chain of custody will be good going on indefinitely on those things.

So far as you know know this hasn't been approved where people haven't used this animal-based testosterone yet i believe it's being used now you believe it is yeah um there's also like wasn't it alex rodriguez is that who it was that was using a slow or a quick release testosterone it was it gets out of your system very quickly yeah a short lifespan or short half-life. What was the deal with that stuff? It's just fast-acting, fast-clearing testosterone. And I think, you know, the landscape on how drugs are used has changed over the last several years as tests, you know, got more accurate. And so the idea is you could take this.

I think he was taking, like, gummies or lozenges, you know, take it at night. And by morning time, you know, the testosterone could be clear your system. So you take it while you're sleeping to help you recover. That's the idea behind it. Yeah, I think you see more along the lines of it's called micro dosing. So small amounts where, you know, again, talking more of recovery versus building up massive muscles, which you saw maybe in the mid to late 90s. You saw these cartoonish figures out, at least on a baseball field. I think now it's evolved a little bit more where there's less amounts using more for recovery benefits. Now, a guy like Jose Canseco, how much damage

did he do when that guy, or positive, depending on how you're looking at it, when that guy came out with that book and explained what he did and what everybody he knew did, how illuminating was that to guys like you? Well, I mean, you talked before about congressional hearings. I think his book came out at a time when the Balco case was kind of in the media and it probably caused those congressional hearings where Congress called baseball to the table and Bud Selig. And you look now, 10 years later, and baseball is completely done, a 180. They lead sports in terms of, you know, anti-doping program, professional sports here. Well, before our program came along. But, yeah, I mean, their testing program is pretty good.

And compared to 10 years ago, it's night and day. Do the athletes look different? I don't follow baseball, but are they smaller guys now? I think so. I mean, I don't think you see the Mark Maguires or the Jose Cansecos as prevalent as you did back then. Definitely look at the statistics. I mean,

those don't lie. You're not seeing 50, 60, 70 home runs anymore. See, I'm torn. I'm torn on that because I think baseball sucks. And that's the only cool thing about it is when a guy whacks a ball and sends it flying. I totally agree with you on the messages it sends to young people. I think there's a difference between that, though, and fighting.

And the difference between that and fighting, clearly in my eyes, is that when you are taking something and you're fighting you can do more damage to an opponent and you kind of force your opponent to also do something if he wants to be on a level playing field if we had a sport where it was just anything goes like the pride days now obviously we're a lot of it is speculation anecdotal evidence and and just people witness accounts from people that were there like ensign inua who's been on my podcast before and talked about the pride contracts, which openly stated, we will not test you for steroids. That was in the contract. And my own experiences with friends who went over there, they were, they were telling them like, you should take steroids. Like, uh, I have a buddy that would normally fight at 170 pounds, could even get down to 155. They were

telling them to do steroids and get up to 185. And he was like, what? Like, you know, he couldn't believe it. He came back from Japan going, dude, they told me to do steroids. And that was the Wild West of the performance-enhancing era, where it seemed like a giant percentage of the people were on something. The difference being that when you're on something, if you're on EPO

and testosterone and human growth hormone and all this thing, and you're inside of a ring or a cage, you can do more damage to your opponent. You can possibly land strikes that you would not be able to land. And some of those strikes may or may not have a permanent effect on your opponent. So in a lot of people's eyes, it's a much more dire and serious consequence than baseball, where you're just hitting a ball with a stick. So in a lot of people's eyes, it's a much more dire and serious consequence than baseball, where you're just hitting a ball with a stick. So in a lot of people's eyes, and in my eyes, I think it's amazing that the UFC has taken this chance and done what they're doing because they really didn't have to do this. What they did is, you know, bringing a guy like you aboard, you know, I've talked to

a lot of trainers and they raised their eyebrows and shook their heads like, oh, shit's going to be different now. Because they realized that this is a real big commitment to try to clean up MMA. And a commitment that, quite honestly, they really didn't have to do. They could have stuck with the Nevada State Athletic Commission's protocol, the urine tests after fights, the occasional blood test if they wanted to do random tests on people they were suspicious of. But in a lot of people's eyes, those tests were more of an intelligence test than they were of, you know, a real honest-to-goodness anti-doping effort. Yeah, I'd agree with everything you just said. I'm often asked, hey, do you think steroid use in MMA or the UFC is way off the chart compared to other sports? And my answer is, I don't know yet. I mean, I've seen very pervasive use in other sports. So I don't think

it's unique to MMA or UFC. What is unique is what you just talked about, the importance of it and that this isn't hitting a ball over the fence with a stick. This is two human beings getting into an octagon and trying to get the other to submit by inflicting pain and hurting them. And when you give someone an unfair and artificially enhanced advantage over that other person, man, in terms of it just not being right, it's at a whole new level. not being right. It's at a whole new level. And yeah, I mean, Dana and Lorenzo from the minute, you know, I had conversations with them before coming over here, I've jumped fully on board to this. And I think everybody realizes that, you know, from a business standpoint, especially

short term, this could hurt the UFC. But, you know, in terms of long-term and short-term health and safety of their fighters, which I'm telling you, these guys are on board with. They care about their athletes. I mean, this speaks volumes of what they're doing. It's a big turnaround also from just a few years ago where testosterone replacement therapy was sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. That was a big issue that you were getting. I mean, there's no need to mention names,

but I know a guy who was in his 20s who was on TRT. It's like, what the fuck? If you're on testosterone replacement and you're in your 20s and you're competing in MMA, you shouldn't be competing in MMA. You've got a real problem. If you're at such a low level of testosterone, one of the things that when I was trying to sort it out and make sense of it all, one of the things that I found most disturbing was my conversations with my friend Dr. Mark Gordon,

who's famous for his work with traumatic brain injury, a lot of soldiers that have come back from getting blown up by IEDs, and the impact that it has on the pituitary gland and how a lot of these guys have very low testosterone because of the impacts that they've taken. And he's pretty adamant about it. He's like, if you have to take testosterone because you've been getting hit in the head too much, the answer is not take testosterone. The answer is don't get hit in the head anymore.

Like, you shouldn't be, like, putting a patch on that and then getting right back into the octagon. If you are forced to take testosterone because of the head injuries, you shouldn't be competing anymore. Yeah, I agree. I can't believe how naive people were just a few years back to allow that to happen. It's amazing. How did it happen? I think just not being educated, just not around it enough. They

didn't look into, you know, things as hard as they should have. That's my guess. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. It was never approved by the Olympics, right? The Olympic Committee never approved it, did they? You know, I think in the history of therapeutic use exemptions on the Olympic level, I think there's maybe one. And I think it was literally, you know, someone involved, I'm not sure, but say sailing that lost their testicles to testicular cancer and almost got to that level versus someone who, you know, urine tests would show low testosterone on, you know, one or two occasions, which my understanding was, which was being required for TRT back in the day. Which not only that is easy to manipulate. That's all they have to do is just be tired.

Like literally all they have to do is like work out really hard, do a crazy workout, stay up all night, piss on in a bottle in the morning. And you're like, this poor guy's got the testosterone of a 90 year old man. But meanwhile, they're manipulating it. And also it's a sign of steroid abuse. Because if you have taken steroids, you've wrecked your endocrine system, and then you go in there and you take these tests, and it shows that your endocrine system is wrecked.

You're like, wow, you need some steroids to fix that. It's crazy that that was the protocol. And this was just a few years ago, we were dealing with several athletes that were competing in the highest levels of MMA, and they were juiced to the tits. Yeah, and it's a good thing we're talking about being in the past because it's not happening going forward. Our program does have a therapeutic use exemption possibility for athletes, so athletes can apply for certain medicines that maybe are banned, that an independent group that USADA puts together of physicians and scientists will

look at to determine if there really isn't a medical need. Like what would that be? Testosterone replacement therapy will not be one of those. Like with Adderall? I can give you a perfect example. So someone recently, one of our fighters has some type of disease where they need medicine administered via an IV every month. An IV, as we'll probably get to talking about here, is a prohibited method under our system. So they would apply for a TUE saying, look, I'm using this IV because I need this drug for this disease I have. So, you know, give me approval to use it. And this board will look at it and determine whether or not that's needed this is one athlete yeah and this athlete needs it once a month yep so when you do that

would you um test them when they're not doing that drug whatever they need and then make sure that they haven't been using an iv bag then yeah i mean that's that's a difficult one how you saw it is going to do it uh i think they would go along with their normal testing protocol on that individual and whether or not it was, you know, hit that individual when they were using an IV or not. If evidence of an IV usage did come up, then they would go back and this could apply to any drug that is granted for a therapeutic use exemption. They then go back and look at that file for that athlete and say, hey, looks like that athlete's using IV. He was approved to use one under a therapeutic use exemption. Are you at liberty to say what the drug is that they have to take? I don't remember what it was. Okay.

Now, what's the reason why they can't use an IV? Is it to mask the possible performance-enhancing drugs? That's the primary reason. And I saw this, we talked a little bit ago about the cycling community. I saw it, you know, up front and center in cycling and that they were using IVs of saline solution to manipulate their biological passports. So to manipulate their, you know, blood level readings, which were being used to determine if they were blood doping. It could also be used to flush a system. It dilutes blood and urine so that natural steroid profiles are very hard to read after you've taken an IV bag. So that's the

primary reason. I think water also prohibits them for some health reasons. Those are many. I mean, I'm sure we're going to talk about it here, but those are on many different levels. The health reasons, I think primarily, uh, you know, when an IV is administered, um, and I've talked to, to many athletes that have had this happen, especially close to a competition, uh, there's a possibility of, of blowing out a vein or having clotting after, you know, the IV is taken out. If the idea is to rehydrate, it's much safer to do it orally. There could be some issues with IV administration and edema, so swelling,

so cells will not be able to get rid of fluid because they've got too much too quick. I have heard of that. I have heard of that being an issue with IV replacement. And I think that was an issue with at least one UFC fighter. I'm trying to remember the story, but I wish I could put a name to the story. But I know someone did have an issue with legal use of it back when it was approved where they got edema. Yeah, I don't know of any current fighters. I've talked to a few retired fighters who have told me about problems that they had with that.

Now, sorry to interrupt, but the concern that a lot of people have is that a lot of these guys are cutting a tremendous amount of weight. Some of them more than 20 pounds. They cut that the day of the weigh-ins. They weigh in looking like a skeleton. And then 24 hours later, they're supposed to engage in the most ferocious form of unarmed combat we know of. What these guys normally would do is rehydrate with an IV. They would go and they would have several bags of liquid put into their body, and then they would just blow up like a balloon, come back in 24 hours later,

and you would see them the next day. They didn't even look like the same person. They looked so much bigger. I mean, some guys it was just freakish to see you would see them rehydrated and you'd be like whoa like what how did this guy do this they can't do that anymore now they have to drink the water and what are the issues with drinking the water and how hard is it going to be for these extreme weight cutting guys to guys to rehydrate? Yeah, I mean, there's many issues. First off, you know, studies show that orally rehydrating is better for you if you're mildly dehydrated. What studies?

Are they done by Gatorade? Who does these studies? Yeah. Is it real? Yeah, they're real. American Trainers Association, Sports Medicine Journal, there's many of them out there. There's two things that they show consistently. Well, number one, it's obviously safer to put something through your mouth than put it in a needle in your vein.

Number two I thought was interesting is your perceived rate of exertion. So how hard you feel you're working after rehydrating orally is less than if you rehydrate via IV. So, you know, the message we're trying to get out is, look, if you, if you rehydrate orally properly, UFC fighters, that next day, you're going to feel a whole lot better when you're exerting yourself. Multiple studies have showed that. Now, that's mild dehydration. Extreme dehydration, the studies do show that IVs are necessary. You probably should go to a hospital and get one if you're extremely dehydrated.

The oral rehydration is not going to do it for you. And in this, you know, in WADA's prohibited method policy, there is an exception to IVs where if you are administered to a hospital setting and given an IV, it's okay. You don't need a therapeutic use exemption. Under our policy, you don't need to notify USADA. The problem or the catch-22 there is I think you need to notify the commission where you're fighting that you were administered to a hospital the day before your fight. And they probably wouldn't let you fight. They're probably not going to let you fight. Wow. So what it all comes down to, Joe, is that our guys and girls need to

get smarter about those weight cuts and should not be excessively dehydrating themselves the day before. Let me tell you one more thing. These studies are in their infancy. I'm talking to a lot of different scientists and physicians about this. But right now, rehydration studies are showing that in 24 hours, if you're dehydrated seriously, you're likely not going to fully rehydrate, whether it be orally or IV, in 24 hours. It's probably going to take more like 48 hours. And the last thing to fully rehydrate is going to be the blood-brain barrier.

So that fluid around the head, the brain that's protecting it from hard shots, there's some science out there that shows that may take 72 hours to fully recover. So, I mean, really throw the IV thing out the window. Even with IV rehydration, you're still putting yourself in serious danger 24 hours later if you're severely dehydrated. Well, let's talk about this because your job is the VP of, what is it, performance? And what is the actual health and performance? What about, is there a way to stop weight cutting? I mean, look, ideally what we should do is match people up that are the same size

and have them compete against other elite athletes that are the same size. Forget about all the weight-cutting nonsense. Let's just weigh you away. You weigh 180. That's what you weigh when you're at your optimum. You should be fighting guys that are also 180. Let's find out who the best 180-pound person is. There's a real problem in the UFC with weight classes.

There's a giant jump in between them. There's 185, and then there's a real problem in the UFC with weight classes. There's a giant jump in between them. There's 185 and then there's 205. If you stand a 185-pound man next to a 205-pound man, you're dealing with 20 16-ounce T-bones that's pushing that 205-pounder. Just think about the amount of mass and power that you can generate with the amount of weight they have, that extra 20 pounds, that's significant. The amount of more power that they could possibly generate, the amount of, you know, just the ability to pick you up when they maybe couldn't if they were just 20 pounds

less, the ability to push out of a lock, to break out of a submission, to break out of a clinch, that's significant. And when you have these big, giant gaps, it's encouraging people to make these extreme weight cuts because they want to be the big guy in the division. I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you with all that. Hopefully, the IV ban and, you know, kind of those statistics I was quoting earlier in those studies will have an effect on things and cause our athletes, trainers, support to take a look at that. I can give you examples of NCAA wrestling in the late 90s had an issue with a bad issue with weight cutting and lost three wrestlers in one year, two saunas, plastic suits, things like that. When you say lost, they died. They died. Yeah.

NCAA went to the extreme and banned most weight-cutting practices. They banned plastic suits, saunas, things like that. They adapted and became much more safer. The IV ban went into effect after WADA passed, I think 2012, and that affected severely Olympic boxing and Olympic wrestling. We're doing weight cuts, you know, similar to what MMA is experienced now. But those sports have much smaller weight classes. True, I think they do. I think they have every 10 pounds, right? Well, I mean, but there was, I think initially, kind of similar to what we're talking about here,

a lot of pushback from the athletes about, you know, this isn't fair, this isn't right, this is going to be unsafe. They adapted pretty quickly, and it's become a thing of the past here. So I think, you know, in terms of what we're going and where we're going, I'm constantly just trying to be a sponge and absorb, you know, studies, science, medicine, pass it along to our fighters, pass it along internally with UFC. And, you know, let's see where it goes. As I said earlier, you know, my position and I think the position of the leadership is always with the health and safety of our fighters, you know, at the forefront. So it'll be an issue that, you know, that personally I'll definitely always be looking at.

Have you had the conversation with them whether or not there will be additional weight classes? I haven't talked about that specifically, but I have talked about what this issue of the IV ban is going to mean and some of the statistics and stories that we're hearing about weight cutting. I'm definitely sharing that with everybody. I think that's hugely important, but there has to be some sort of an option for these people. And for someone who's, like, say, Chris Weidman. Weidman's a big guy. I mean, he's very...

The fact that he makes 185 is shocking enough. I saw him when he cut weight on a short notice to make 185 for Damian Maia, and he looked like death. I mean, he was on death's door when he weighed in. And then the next day he went out and won just by sheer toughness and will and skill and just the fact that he's that kind of guy. But that's because he cut a lot of weight.

I mean, that's how he made that weight. And then he fought the next day and he was definitely depleted. You could see in his performance. I mean, he won a decision against Maia, but he looked sluggish and he just pushed through just through sheer toughness. A guy like him was the champ at 185. If all of a sudden weight cutting starts getting banned, I mean, he's walking around, I'd have to guess at least 20 pounds heavier than that, at least. What does a guy like that do? He's the champion. If he can't make the 185 weight class anymore, does he just move up to 205? Yeah, that's an interesting, tough question.

And I think, you know, these are the toughest guys and girls on the planet and just able to put themselves through unhuman pain and suffering, both in the ring and, I think, through the weight cutting. So, you know, I don't know the answer to that right now other than, you know, educate and share as much information. I'm not a big believer in throwing a million rules at people. I think you take things one step at a time. Let's see what this IV band does. Let's see kind of what the education that we're providing our athletes does. And, you know, always reevaluate it month to month, year to year.

I just think that there should be some sort of an option for these guys. I mean, the idea that they have a 20-pound weight jump between 185 and 205, and then there's a big one is 205 to 265. I mean, that is fucking crazy there's a lot of guys that are small heavyweights or just dehydrated light heavyweights and they have to figure out what to do about something like that i really think the ufc needs many more weight classes and they've resisted that they think it waters the sport down like it does with boxing but i think it creates more champions and more champions creates the possibility of more champion versus champion fights.

I just think that these gaps, if you're going to institute this no IV thing and you're going to change the whole system of weight cutting, you've got to give these people some options. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. It's not, other than IVs being used to defeat drug tests, which is in my past experience, it's a new issue for me that, you know, I'm learning on a day-to-day basis. So, uh, now what about athletes in camp? Are they allowed to use an IV in camp? Like what if they have a particularly brutal day in the hot sun, they go run up hills

and they come back and their, their doctor says, listen, man, you're really fucking dehydrated. We would like to get an IV bag in you. Can they call you guys up and say, hey, we have an athlete that he just did a two a day and, you know, did hill sprints. And we would really like to get this kid an IV. Again, in a hospital administration setting, they can do it. Don't even need to notify us. That may be an instance where they would want to do it because then they wouldn't have to tell, you know, the commission if there was, you know, a fight coming up soon. But wouldn't that be something they could potentially manipulate? It could, but, you know, they could manipulate, yeah, their blood levels, absolutely.

But, you know, hey, it's a balancing act. If somebody is really, truly that dehydrated and needs one, you know, even if it can be used to manipulate a blood test, if it's for their health and safety because they're so severely dehydrated, then the policy is made so as not to stop that. Now, Andy Foster, who's the head of the California State Athletic Commission, has done a fantastic job here in California. I'm a big fan of this guy. And he's just aggressively going after drug doping and tested a lot of people on the UFC card here. I believe he tested everyone. And just Shlomenko, who got popped, I think they gave him a three-year ban.

But that's extreme. I mean, that is sending a big, big message. Do you think that that's the kind of stuff that has to be done? Like, it has to be so extreme that you have to have a few sacrificial lambs where the rest of the athletes have to go, look, this is my fucking career. You know, if you want to really compete, this is the way you're going to have to do it. You can't take any chances because we're not talking about nine months anymore, which is not that bad for a fighter. Because the reality is you're not going to fight more than once every six months anyway. So they get, you know, at an elite level, it's very rare that a guy like, say, a Vitor Belfort fights more than once every six months anyway. So they get, you know, at an elite level, it's very rare that a guy like,

say, a Vitor Belfort fights more than once every six months. At the most, you might fight three times a year, right? So a guy takes a few extra months off. Not that big a deal. Three years, it's kind of the end of your career. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. There needs to be the deterrent effect up front. And that's, you know, one of the reasons I think our policy is so strong. It's our policy first time is two, but if there's, you know, one of the reasons I think our policy is so strong. It's our policy first time is two, but if there's aggravating circumstances, and that would be quantified as say somebody was found to take a steroid and did an IV bag just before the test. And we found out about that, that could be an aggravating circumstance, a possibility of four years,

which, you know, as we get out and educate our fighters, I talk about those terms and I ask, who thinks two, definitely four, is a career ender? Most of them, heads bobbing up and down. I mean, unless you're on the absolute top of the UFC food chain, four years, you're long past. Four years is you're done. I mean, if you get popped at 34, then you come back, you're 38, that's crazy.

It's not going to happen. I mean, if it does happen, you'll be severely diminished and the likelihood of you being, I mean, you're going to be off the sauce now too. Like you were probably doing something. So your, your system has to recover. You know, you're then there's also the mental aspect for a lot of these guys. There's a lot of these fighters that were fighting enhanced for most of their career. And they have this mental that were fighting enhanced for most of their career, and they have this mental advantage of fighting enhanced where they know they're juiced up and

it gives them all this confidence. Then all of a sudden you take that away and they just don't seem to be the same guys. Yeah, you know what's really interesting on the mental side of things, and I learned this kind of throughout my previous career talking to athletes is the mental effort that it takes to use drugs when you're under a good solid anti-doping system. Many athletes say, hey, despite the performance benefits I was getting from these drugs, I definitely felt stronger, could go longer. What it took to figure out what drugs to take, how long they were going to clear my system, worry after I took a drug, oh shit, are the testers going to come tomorrow morning?

That mental burden for a lot of these athletes far outweighed the physical enhancement they were getting. That's a good point. Tremendous amount of stress. Could you imagine? I mean, our policy, you're going to be tested, the ability to be tested 365 days a year. An athlete who would choose to use something, that night that athlete used something. Can you imagine listening for that doorbell or that door knock all night long, all morning long? There were some athletes I talked to that had surveillance systems up. They would literally, at night, after taking a dose, be looking at their television screens. Crack heads.

Who's coming down? It's crazy crazy that was a huge mental task and they can't hide either right it's not like you could just go to palm beach and take a hotel room and camp out you have to like let the ufc know where you are all the time yeah so we have a whereabouts program and so that requires our athletes on a quarterly basis to fill out whereabouts, where they can be located know where they're going to be at all times. If they're going out to a movie or the supermarket or something like that, it doesn't mean that. It just means if USADA chooses on a day or night to go locate one of our athletes, they have an idea of where to go find them and can find them within a reasonable amount of time. I was having a conversation with, to keep this as vague as possible, I was having a conversation with an athlete who was telling me

that he knew of an athlete that was not clean. And so this athlete decided to go overseas and train, just decided to like go hang out in some other country and train there for a while. What do you do if someone says, you know, hey, I'm gonna go train in Thailand. You guys gonna go fly out to Thailand and test them? It's one of the reasons we hired USADA. USADA has partnerships with international anti-doping agencies all across the world. I mean, that's their job. They're constantly going to conferences. They're going out and training collection officers from other international bodies. So they do. They have the ability to reach out anywhere in the world because our population of athletes is spread across the world and get a test taken or a sample taken from them at any time. I'm not accusing anybody of anything. But let's just say if you were an unscrupulous athlete and you had ties to maybe people who also do unscrupulous things and they had a reasonable amount of power in a certain country and you could just go there and they kind of had deals with people. And they said, look, you know, we're going to give you a blood sample.

We're going to give you a urine sample. We're going to give you a urine sample. But we'd just like you to wait here for a moment, and we'll just go in the other room. And we come back with this stuff. And they come back, and they give it to these guys. Are you getting, like, videotape of this happening? Are you making sure you're seeing the exact athlete put the exact blood in the exact thing? How are you going to make sure that there's no fuckery no shenanigans going on especially in other countries yeah so there's a certain standard no matter which country the collection's going on to uh of how these how these collections happen

and the doping collection officer the d the dco has to physically witness the athlete providing the sample uh whether it be urine or blood. They have to. They have to. And how do you prove that they did that? Like if you're dealing with someone, like I said, in another country, how do you prove that this commissioner guy actually was there? Well, I mean, the DCOs are trained based on worldwide collection standards,

and they're vetted before they're hired. I mean, that could happen anywhere, Joe. It could happen in this country or another country. But I like America better than I like other countries. I like to talk shit about them. I think part of it would be, okay, so the laboratory gets these samples, you know, I think we're doing 2,700 to 3,000 tests a year. You start looking at samples, you know, from a particular country, whether it be the United States in a certain region or another country, and you start seeing suspicion in that sample. You start seeing variances in the biological passport

and collections done in another country versus when, you know, maybe they come here to the United States, things like that. So it's a constant detective game going on. And there's, you know, things put in place for every conceivable situation to try to detect that. It just seems like you're going to catch them. It just seems like there's only so much wiggle room these guys have these days. But are there any things that are on your radar that could possibly be used to cheat that we're not aware of yet, that most people aren't aware of? Like the testosterone that's being done with animals. I never heard about that before. Is there anything else like that that's going on right now? That's one. I can't give you any specific example, but I will give the example

of the cyclist that just got caught for the drug that's still in a clinical trial. And what the anti-doping, what that shows what the anti-doping community has been doing is reaching out to the pharmaceutical industry and saying, inquiring, hey, any drugs that you have in clinical trial are being developed. Do you see any potential for athletic performance enhancing benefits? And if the pharmaceutical industry said, yeah, this particular drug was called oxygen in a pill. So you take it and it create more red blood cells, similar to EPO, but in oral form. And so the pharmaceutical industry obviously told anti-doping, yeah, well, this is coming out. Anti-doping community was able to develop a test kind of secretly

and use the test and caught somebody. Oxygen in a pill. That's what it was called, yeah. Wow. So it's essentially the same thing as EPO or it works in a different way? My understanding, essentially the same thing. It causes your body to produce more red blood cells, which carry more oxygen and can replenish your muscles quicker. Now, here's the rub on that. Okay. Obviously, that's an illegal substance and it should be banned. But what about guys who train at altitude? What about guys who sleep in altitude tents? Like I remember on one of the countdown shows, BJ Penn was sleeping in this crazy zip-up

tent. And one of the things he said, you know, BJ Penn's accent, he goes, you know when I'm sleeping in a plastic tent, someone's getting their ass kicked. Because he has to zip up this fucking tent to sleep in it to simulate that he's at 10,000 feet or he's sleeping there. There's all sorts of other things, like a scent. You're aware of those altitude machines that they use that vary the altitude it's like I know um Ian McCall's a big fan of those she said

they have tremendous effects cryogenic chambers I'm a huge fan of those they have massive effects on inflammation massive effects on neoprenephrine cold shock proteins all these different things that help you heal and reduce inflammation and help you train more. If you could do what that could do in a pill form, it might be illegal, right? Yeah, and I hear the argument of, hey, isn't that cheating, getting an oxygen tent? But I don't buy off that that's the same thing as taking a drug that manipulate the hormones and steroids in your body. But what about EPO? I mean, isn't it exactly the same?

I mean, if you take EPO, doesn't it do exactly the same thing as sleeping at altitude? Well, I think it does, but it does it in a quicker form. You don't have to put forth the effort of sleeping in an oxygen tent every night for a period of weeks or months. It's instantaneous. I'm not on the side of EPO. Don't get me wrong. I don't think you should be allowed to take it. And I think, as far as I know, the only fighter that's been popped for in the UFC

was Ali Bagutinov, which shows you how impressive Demetrius Johnson's cardio is. He outworked that guy who was on EPO at the time. But if he's taking that and that's illegal, but he gets the exact same benefit as someone who's sleeping in an oxygen tent, why is it more difficult? I just don't, why is that legal? I don't think you get the same exact benefit. I think it's way more extreme in using the drug.

Yeah, that you can get your hematocrit. I mean, I've seen some hematocrit levels of some athletes get up in the mid-50s to low 60s. What's a normal number? So the hematocrit level is the amount of red blood cells per blood volume. Normal numbers are 42%, maybe on the high end, 47% or 48%. I've seen them, again, in the the mid 50s to low 60s. And when you start talking about hematocrit levels at those amounts, there's so many red blood cells per blood volume that your blood becomes thick, tar-like. And I think we saw this with cyclists in the mid 90s that just discovered

EPO and were using it. They were dropping dead in their mid-20s because of having strokes because their blood became so thick that any small little blockage, the blood couldn't get through and stop circulating. You had instances where they were setting their alarms in the middle of the night and to get up and drink water and do push-ups and exercise to make sure their blood was still flowing for fear of it slowing down and stop flowing in the middle of the night. So you can extremely increase hematocrit levels via using

drugs like this versus, you know, training at oxygen and oxygen tents. I think maybe you can get up a little bit higher into that normal range in the 47 or 48 percent, but I haven't seen extremes of getting into mid-50s and low 60s from that. Yeah, my friend who was on the cycling team said that he would hear, they would be on a tour, sleeping in a bus, and you would hear guys get up in the middle of the night and hear their bike come off the rack, and they'd go riding, because they had to, because their heart would start beating funky, and they'd be like, oh shit, and they literally were producing so much blood that they had to burn some of it off.'s that's terrifying yeah i don't know if it's

burning it off it's just yeah keeping it circulating keeping it certainly but also the fact that these are the same guys taking this stuff um not the the cyclists were obviously but fighters they would get hit you're gonna get hit you're gonna get a lot of bruising and bruising is essentially just internal bleeding i mean that's what you're getting. I mean, you look at a guy's leg and he gets leg kicked a bunch and you see these big welts and black and blue all over his legs. That's blood. He's bleeding. It's clotting up inside of his leg, but he's bleeding and swelling. When a guy's on EPO, is there a more significant danger when something like that's going on, if you are bleeding like that or if you are bruising? I think so. Again, I'm not a scientist, but common sense would show you,

if you have a lot more red blood cells floating around that are able to clot, then yeah, you're likely running that risk. It's just amazing what people are willing to risk just to win. It sure is. It certainly is. That's been a lesson that I'm not surprised anymore. You see a lot in formal questionnaires, interviews of athletes, that if you could give up a couple years in your life, and there was a pill that would allow you to win an Olympic gold medal, but you had to give up four or five years in your life, would you? And typically you see the answers to that overwhelmingly, yes. and typically you see the answers of that overwhelmingly, yes.

I think a lot of it is athletes are a little bit younger in their mid-early 20s, feeling invincible at that time. Who's thinking about five years on the end of your life then? I think a lot of the decision-making of taking some of these performance-enhancing drugs occurs then where you feel young and invincible and who cares what you have to pay 20 or 30 years down the line for making a decision now yeah and there's also a bunch of athletes that are putting money in the bank of medical technology and innovation and they're like look one day they're gonna fix this let me just take this shit now. And then five, 10 years from now, that'll just build me a new liver. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, uh, you know, one thing people were kind of surprised that this is

my opinion. Uh, but I understand a lot of times why these decisions are made. There's such temptation financially. There's so there's such incentive out there financially in a lot of these sports. There's such pressure, I don't know what the word is, distrust of their competitors or teammates that they all feel that they're using something. There's a lot of distrust of sports governing bodies that they really don't feel that they care because their programs aren't solid. And so I've had so many of these athletes really surprised that you know I

say hey I understand why I made that decision I get it as opposed to you know the hell you're doing you should never have done that so you understand it you're the good cop I do I mean I really genuinely feel that I like to think that I wouldn't make that decision but hell if I was in my early 20s mid-20s I don't know I couldn't sit here and tell you that and if you're in the culture of you know you're in these camps and everyone in the camp is using, you most likely would have a problem if you weren't, where people wouldn't trust you or, you know, they would, they'd be more likely to turn on you or you'd have a problem training with these people. I mean, there's a, there's this culture of camaraderie that comes with fight camps, especially where

these guys have to trust each other because they're beating the shit out of each other on a daily basis, and they have to trust that they're hitting each other at 60%, 70%, not 100%, and that they are trying to work and help each other. Have you had resistance from any camps in particular? No, outwardly, no. It's all been positive. A lot of questioning on the IV issue,

so maybe quantify a little bit of resistance there in terms of the anti-doping overwhelmingly hey good for you guys this is great and I don't know if that's some of that's lip service or not but I'm guessing that even those athletes that have chosen in the past to use that a lot of them are like thank god I don't this decision is now made for me I don't have to be making this decision anymore. Now there's something in place where I can trust that my sport really does care about me. I can trust that, hey, if my opponent is using, he's risking at least his career going down the tube. So I can begin to trust that who I'm fighting is clean or just being really stupid.

We had this conversation in Brazil about Vitor Belfort's levels when he was tested during his camp for Chris Weidman. Vitor Belfort was a guy who was on testosterone replacement because he allegedly had low testosterone. And, you know, he was making it out like he was this martyr and he needed medicine because, you know, he was he had an issue and he even compared it to someone being a diabetic and needing insulin you have to give them their insulin which i i thought was disingenuous and in a lot of ways it's kind of a crazy thing to say when everybody knows i mean it's not a mystery that he used to be 240 pounds when he's 19 years old it's not a mystery that he was on testosterone replacement and looked like a fucking gorilla. And then during camp, he tests three times higher than Weidman. Weidman tests at 300.

Vitor tests at 1,200. And everybody was like, well, what the fuck is going on? You know, wasn't it? Am I saying the numbers right? Was it four times higher? Four times higher? It was 900 or 1,200? 1 i was right okay so he's four times higher right and he tells you know weidman tells him you know i'm gonna punish you i know you were using in camp i'm gonna punish you but you were saying that it's not necessarily the case and that when someone tests at 1,200 through a urine test, explain that. Yeah, and I actually relied on experts to kind of guide me through this.

But urine results like that depend on, I think it's called your excretion level. Different people excrete out in urine different levels of testosterone. Depends a lot on your metabolism. One person could be a high excreter and one person could be a low excreter. It's not necessarily a representation of your true testosterone levels. We talked about earlier, blood tests would be way more accurate. So why test him for urine at all? Well, I mean, I think the urine test is done because it's a little bit cheaper. They can initially look at the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio. That is a pretty true

marker in urine. The amount of testosterone that you have to epitestosterone, the levels can vary depending on how you're excreting out, but that ratio will be very accurate of what's in your body. A normal human has a one-to-one ratio. There are some variances on the positive and on the plus and negative side, and if you look at what Vitor's ratio was there, it was within normal range. But you allow up to four- four to one in Nevada. Is that still the case with the way the UFC has this new program? Is it still four to one? Because it was

six to one at one point in time. That was criticized, and it was dropped down to four to one. So that's gone out the window a little bit. The ratio is looked at to determine whether or not you go to a more accurate backup test called, we talked about earlier, the carbon isotope ratio test. So in all cases, if a test proves high over whatever the number is, three to one, four to one, six to one, then the determination is usually made, hey, let's go to the definitive test, carbon isotope, to determine whether or not that's foreign-based testosterone.

And if it is foreign-based testosterone, how much of a time, like once you get the test results, like say if you test a guy and his urine tests are kind of funky, he's reading really high, and then you decide to go to a blood test, if he's doing something like Alex Rodriguez was doing, where it's like quick release, or how would you describe it? Quick half-life? What would you describe it? Yeah, fast acting, fast clearing. Fast clearing. How would you describe it? Quick, quick half-life. What would you describe it? Yeah. Fast acting, fast clearing, fast clearing. How would you, how would you mitigate that?

So ask that question again. So you do the, so you do the one test and shows that he's got a very high level, 1200. And then you want to, you want to do a blood test. Not necessarily. You could go right to that same urine sample and do a different test, do the CIR test on that. So it can be. So you don't do that ordinarily. The carbon isotope is not done immediately?

In our program, it will be. That will be as opposed to, you know, hey, let's do the testosterone, epitestosterone ratio test first. In some cases, we'll go right to, or USADA will go right to the CIR test and bypass the TE ratio. And that is because of the microdosing issue. So say like an Alex Rodriguez took a fast-sasting testosterone that didn't really manipulate his TE level too much. If you were just doing that test, it would show a two or three to one maybe. And in the past, antidepressants say, okay, well, he's good. He's under four to one or six to one. Where if a CIR test was done on that, they would have known right away that he was using.

So under our program, oftentimes a CIR test will be done right away, regardless of what the TE ratio is. Okay, so if you are doing what Alex Rodriguez was doing, even if he tests okay within his boundaries and normal levels, you can do a CIR test and catch him even though it's out of his system? Well, no, no. If it's out of his system, it's out of his system. But if it's a four-hour thing, is that true? Is that actually the level where it really is gone in four hours?

I mean, that's what they say. I'd be a little bit hesitant if I was an athlete to depend on, you know, if I had a drug test in five hours, if something's going to clear in four hours, they can detect pretty minute amounts. But my understanding is it does clear pretty quickly. Are you going to test guys in the middle of the night? USADA has the ability to do that. I don't think they're going to, you know, make that routine. But if, again, this is all detective work, If they're looking at biological passports over time and see variances between mornings and evenings, they could get a tip or other information that's non-science related, just a tip from somebody that, hey, this is what's going on in this camp.

They'd have the ability to do that, yes. Hmm. A tip. Has that happened before? Have you guys had tips from people that fighters are using? So actually USADA has a hotline or a tip line that's given to all our athletes. If you hear something about something going on from somebody or a camp, they can anonymously call in and lead that. And you look back at all of the major performance-enhancing drug cases that have come out over the past 15 years you look at

balco you look at biogenesis uh you look at kirk radomski who's a new york mets bat boy that was distributing to athletes there's a bat boy he was he was a clubhouse attendant the bat boy was getting them drugs sure was wow how'd they catch him is he in jail now? He's a convicted felon. I think he's done with probation. But all of those cases, all the major cases that have happened over the last decade, decade and a half, all were a result of investigations, not necessarily anti-doping side of things. And USADA, who we're using, is aware of that. They actually have someone on their staff, former law enforcement, who's an investigator that will liaison and reach out to various law enforcement agencies, both here in the United States and internationally, so that, say, another case comes out and a local law enforcement agency goes in and does a search

warrant and they find a list of UFC athletes of what drugs they were getting or being distributed, you saw it would have the ability, hopefully, to go to law enforcement and say, hey, when you're done kind of with the criminal side of things here, can you give us, find a way to give us some of your evidence to use it here and use it that way. So again, Joe, we're just trying to, our program has every resource available that we know of, science-wise, investigative-wise, to create that deterrent effect. So athlete, you may have found the newest, latest graded drug that there will never be a test for, but you're running the risk of whoever's getting that for you at some point, you know, running along to some investigation and that information out and catching you on the back door. It's definitely happened a lot in the past. And is that what happened with Balco? It was. So Balco was a criminal investigation first. And what we did there was interfaced with

anti-doping. So we discovered drugs in Balco that were designer drugs that they weren't tests for. And through the back door, went to anti-doping and said, hey, here's what we've got. We're trying to figure out who Balco's clients are, what they're using. If when we bring them in, they're telling us the truth about what they've used. So the anti-doping side of things was able to develop tests for these drugs, go out and test some of these athletes, both current samples provided and samples that were frozen and left over from previous provisions, and catch some of those athletes for the drugs they were using. They then pass that information back along to us so that

when we go out and question an athlete and they say, I didn't use anything, we will say, you're full of shit. Now, when you say it was a criminal investigation first, what was the crime? be able to say you're full of shit. Now, when you say it was a criminal investigation first, what was the crime? So actually that was back in my days. I was a IRS special agent. So it involved financial crime. It involved money laundering. So the taking of profits from drug distribution and putting them back in the financial system. Oh, right. Because they have to have some way to account for the money. Correct. Right. Because they're making all this money. Make it look good. How much does a guy like Barry Bonds pay for steroids to a guy like Victor Conte?

Like, how much does that work? He was interesting because he didn't pay anything. He paid in the form of giving advertising. It was really an ingenious plan. Instead of, you know, in exchange for what I'm giving you, you give me back money, do advertising for my supplement company, go in magazines and ads and say, hey, you work with me and my supplements and they're the reason for your success. Like ZMA and stuff like that.

Who knows what the value of that was, of that advertising. For a guy like Barry Bonds, millions. It was an ingenious plan, money laundering plan. I've had Conte in here. Dana White fucking hates that guy, but I found him to be a pleasant individual. I didn't have a problem with him, and he was very forthright. He was very honest about what he did and how he got away with it and what he thinks is going on right now.

A lot of people are suspicious of him, of course, because, I mean, he's now, like, working as an anti-performance-enhancing drugs advocate when he became famous for being a guy who provided performance-enhancing drugs to athletes. It's a weird sort of turnaround late in life, and people are suspicious, and rightly so. But what he has done is at least illuminate what he was able to pull off yeah you know i'm asked about him often and i always say hey i welcome anybody over to to the good side um i'm do you believe him i'm a firm believer in second chances i think you know you have to you

have to take everything he says with a little bit of grain of salt um i read something the other day that he still keeps a hand in kind of the dark world and that's where he learns about all this stuff. The dark world. If you're truly an anti-doping advocate and you know about things going on in the dark world

and you're not, you know, exposing who those people are, then you're really not truly an anti-doping advocate. But the guy's a character. I mean, I enjoyed, he's one of those guys in my former career, you run into a lot of characters like that,

and I enjoy everything about those people. It's just living life and running into characters like that, whether in a good or bad way, makes life fun. So you enjoy it because it's part of the flavor of the gig? Absolutely. And also because you're a pretty straight-edge guy. You like people who are living on the gig? Absolutely. And also because you're a pretty straight-edged guy, you know? You like people who are living on the edge like that.

It's always fun to see how the other side lives. I don't trust anybody with a fucking mustache like that, I'll tell you that. When you get one of them little skinny mustaches, there's just very few people that I trust. Maybe a couple black guys, maybe some people of Puerto Rican descent that have a little skinny mustache. But I don't know, Conte. You've seen his mustache? Yeah, it's something about that mustache that makes me go, hmm. You know, I just hope at some point, because he does.

He's got a bit of a platform. You know, still a lot of, hell, you had him in here. Look at that mustache. Get the fuck out of here, dog. Come on, son. I'm waiting for it. You know, he's been critical of me. I'm waiting for a thank you from him for bringing him over to the good side. What's his criticism been?

I don't even know. Don't listen to it? Don't listen to it, really. Good for you. Aldo. Jose Aldo has said that he won't do the IV, or that he won't listen to the ban on IVs. He's going to take it, and he said they'll still let me fight. You know, what do you think about that? Actually, when we were in Brazil a couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with him about that.

And he said it was just one of those days where he was in a certain mood, maybe a little bit joking, maybe a little bit pissed off about something else and said those things and said he shouldn't have, doesn't those he apologized for doing that and uh so i felt pretty good after that meeting he felt that way crawl inside that dude's head and camped out planted flags shit all over the place i mean that guy was dealing with some serious psychological warfare at a level that i don't think he had ever experienced before yes connor's really good at that, isn't he? He's the best. He's the best. It's like he took Muhammad Ali and Chael Sonnen, and he rolled it up in this crazy Celtic warrior character.

And he's good. That's the thing. He's not just a trash talker. He's fucking dangerous. It's a once-in-a-lifetime personality. Yeah. And he pulls it off consistently. He's always on his game well the fact that he was willing to bet dana and lorenzo three million dollars that

he would knock mendez out in the second round and he knocked mendez out in the second round i mean he's a fucking freak he really is he's a freak i wonder if it if it comes naturally or he sits it sits around at night plotting these things out because he's so damn good at it well he was always a very good fighter i was a big fan of his when he was competing in Europe. And, you know, he's fighting in the U.K. And actually, I tweeted him way back in the day before he ever came to the UFC saying that I enjoy his fights and I hope he gets over here. And then, boy, did he get over here.

Jesus Christ. I mean, that UFC weigh-ins when he fought Mendez was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life of all the fights that have ever called all the weigh-ins that have ever been at I have never Seen anything like that in America, and it was like we were in Dublin. That's amazing I'm four months into this so I'm a newbie so I expect that now Don't expect that no that was that was a total outlier I've never seen anything expected if he fights again though in a bigger way in December when

he fights Aldo Jesus Christ that's gonna be crazy if Aldo makes it to it without getting injured and he makes it to it without getting injured which is a big problem with this sport you know if you look at boxing matches boxing matches that get arranged and how many of them actually come to fruition it's most of them most fights get scheduled they'd come and they they actually they come to pass with the ufc it's it's maybe 70 you know maybe 70 i mean i might be wrong but if i had a guess like big fights 75 at the most 25 of them fall out it seems like just yeah it's interesting it's it's another it's it's lagging behind a little bit the anti-doping side because that's taking up so much of my time but it's another responsibility

under my title is to try to provide our athletes to reach out provide them with other resources in terms of training rehabilitation we've uh reached out to a couple companies here domestically exos which does a lot of training for NFL draft picks. Exos? Exos, yeah. What is that? How do you spell it? It's a training facility. How do you spell it?

E-X-O-S. And what are their training facilities? Yeah, so they are most widely known from taking, shoot, if you look at most of the first-round draft picks in the NFL, they've gone and trained at Exos from their end of their last season in college through the combine, and they've just instituted good nutrition, good training methods. We've contracted with them a couple months ago, sent a couple athletes down there.

I think Rashad Evans went down. Forrest went down kind of from an internal perspective look at things. I think Luke Rockhold went down there, CM Punk. Forrest is retired. He is. And he went down there to look at what? Just experience, you know, a week of training. So the idea is to get our athletes to train smarter, to listen to their bodies, to, you know, give them techniques and proper nutrition, things like that. So that as our guys are training smarter, listening to their bodies better, there will be less instances of getting injured, you know, coming up to big fights. And the UFC is developing some sort of a performance center, correct?

Correct, we are. I think they're breaking ground pretty soon on that, but, you know, the idea would be through consulting, you know, with these other companies that have been in the business of training high-level athletes to putting all these resources and tools and machines and space available to this state-of-the-art world-class facility that our athletes would have the ability to come to and train, to come to and rehabilitate. Not only UFC athletes, but I think the idea is to make this place so state-of-the-art so we would welcome in athletes you know from other sports that

hey this is the world-class place to go to your training and learn how to do your training and similar to that as we're doing with our anti-doping program hoping to lead the pack the idea is to lead the pack in terms of how we teach our athletes to train. Is there a consensus though on the correct way to train as far as strength and conditioning goes, as far as like how much time to spend doing skill work versus how much time to spend during endurance work? There seems like there's a lot of debate and then there's a lot of athletes vary as far as their needs, their style of fighting. Like how would you manage something like that? Yeah, that's a tough one for

me that I'm, I'll be the first to admit, just learning and coming up to speed. I mean, you probably know better and your, you know, involvement in MMA and what it feels like to train and what you would need to do in your training to be able to be ready to get into a, you know, real fight a month or a couple weeks later. I'll turn that back around on you. What do you think in terms of how close to a fight these guys need to be going full speed so that when they get in that octagon, it's not a shock to the system? Like, holy shit, what's going on?

Well, it depends on who you ask because there's a lot of people that I respect that vary wildly on how they approach things. Like, you'll talk to one guy who's a strength and conditioning coach, and he has this very specific idea of how you should train, and then another guy who's also very well respected, but completely different methodology. I'm a big fan of what Marv Marinovich was able to do with BJ Penn and the amount of work that he did with BJ's endurance. I think that BJ during that time was just one of the greatest of all time. During the time we fought Diego Sanchez and Sean Shirk,

and when BJ was in his prime, and I know during the Diego Sanchez fight in particular, it was an absolutely brutal camp for him. And he went and worked with him for only a couple fights because it was so goddamn goddamn brutal but a lot of people think and Nick Curzon who's a protege of Marinovich I've had him on the podcast we discussed it pretty pretty deep and he thinks and I like the way he thinks he believes that strength and conditioning during camp is everything and that's really what you should primarily focus on.

That these guys already know how to fight and that really they should be putting almost all of their effort into conditioning. Getting their body to the point where their body can perform at an extremely high level for five rounds, five minutes each. And that all the other skill work and everything like that should actually take a backseat to conditioning. Because what you're dealing with when you're dealing with a championship level fight like that is an athlete that's so finely tuned in skill wise already that really what you need to do is give them the horsepower and give them the gas tank and that also what what that also would do is it would prevent the really hard training that is breaking guys down like the really hard wrestling training that's breaking guys

down instead of doing that you would just drill Instead of doing these hard sparring drills You would just drill matter of fact tim kennedy Was just on the fighter and the kid podcast with brian callen and brendan shob and brendan Texted me last night and said that kennedy said he doesn't spar He said he just doesn't spar he said he moves around with guys and he just does strength and conditioning work and everything like that He said but the sparring like it just you you take enough punishment fighting so he's he's of the the mindset that you shouldn't be beating yourself

up in the gym so i think there's a lot of variation there yeah i agree i think that's something that that exos uh promotes is that it depends on you know an athlete individual to individual some are different than others. One thing that they did tell us is they were just amazed in getting back to kind of the weight cutting thing that an athlete who's going to compete 24 hours later is putting their body through such extreme conditions just 24 hours before. And the fact that that's going to have on your performance

when you do an extreme cut and then put that weight back on. And that, you know, during the off season, when you don't have a fight scheduled, and you're maybe even 20 pounds heavier than that, you know, the muscle memory of getting used to working out at that 20 pounds heavier than you're actually going to be fighting doesn't seem to make a lot of common sense because you're fighting as a completely different feel and person and muscle mass that that, you know, training wise doesn't seem to make a lot of common sense because you're fighting as a completely different feel and person and muscle mass um that that you know training wise doesn't seem to make a lot of sense so i don't know again i'm i'm new to all this and trying to be a sponge and absorb everything and uh yeah i've seen the horror stories i've seen guys cut too much weight just fight like shit and i've seen guys that really blew their opportunity at being champion.

The best example that I've ever used is Travis Luter. Travis Luter was one of the best American black belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, especially at the time. He was just extremely high-level black belt, very, very technical, very strong, and fought Anderson Silva and didn't make weight, didn't make weight. And when I tell you that he was on fucking death's door, I've never, in all my years of watching fights, watching weigh-ins, seeing guys look dehydrated,

I've never seen anybody look as bad as him. His lips were cracked. Like, you could see, like, cracks in his lips where his lips had shrunken down. And, like, he was chapped. His face was completely sunken in. That's scary. And he was shuffling. He couldn was completely sunken in. That's scary. And he was shuffling.

He couldn't walk to the scale. He was shuffling. And he didn't make the weight. And he tried for like an hour and a half afterwards to try to make the weight. Still the next day, took Anderson Silva down, mounted him, was on top of him. And I'll tell you what, if Travis was 100% right there, he would have submitted Anderson. Like Travis was submitting everybody. He was just tapping people at will. Like Charlesccarthy who's a friend of mine who trained with

him in the house he said it was like rolling with ricardo laborio he said his level was like super high level and blew his chance and really never never sort of reached the his full potential after that but that was that was like the worst I've ever seen is like a guy who just blew his potential. I'll tell you an interesting stat. I think it was the American Journal of Sports Medicine. So they had a dehydration, rehydration study, and they had certain percentages of dehydration and what that meant to a body. And I think it was 7% or more, your cognitive skills decline immensely. And I think it was 15% dehydrated. In the study, it said death, imminent death. Organs were shut down. 15%. Start doing the

numbers, Joe, of what some of these cuts that you've heard about and seen. I heard one the other day, someone on the radio talking about an athlete they had that was 170 four days before a weigh-in and went down i think to 145 and do the math on now that's assuming all that weight cut was water i don't know if that's actually the case but probably and we're talking that short time that's almost 15 conor mcgregor when he fought chad mendes he looked like a dead man i mean you could see i mean people were commenting it online they're like jesus christ look at him can a guy like that a guy like that who's fighting a guy like mendez can a guy like that in 24 hours orally rehydrate properly yeah i don't know what the question of that i mean i think i think our athletes are outliers they are the toughest individual

you know they're genetic freaks to begin with so you know maybe this common science doesn't quite apply to them by the exact number but hey i tell you it's something we had we had a meeting the other day with our operations staff and our fighters come in on monday or tuesday and the first thing they do is weigh them in just to kind of get an idea of hey where they where they're looking at. Do they do a body fat or a water composition? Not that I'm aware of, but I tell you, I'm going to start being aware of kind of what these numbers are coming in versus, you know, what the ultimate weigh-in is. And again, just trying to be, you know, not trying to be the police, but trying to be

an advocate and maybe sit down with some of these fighters and say, hey, look, look what the studies show here. You know, look what you're subjecting yourself to. Maybe you can get away with it, you know, on the outside, but on the inside, these things don't go away and you're probably doing, you know, lasting damage. Have you talked to any ex-fighters? I've talked to a few about that have ongoing kidney problems. They're probably going to have the rest of their life thyroid problems or their thyroids all messed up from these extreme weight cuts. It's definitely out there. It's devastating.

Yeah, it's devastating. And, well, Daniel Cormier didn't make the Olympic team because of it or didn't compete in the Olympics because of his kidney shutting down. It's a giant, giant problem. It's just awful. And it doesn't – here's the thing. For a guy like Aldo and a guy like McGregor, what really people want to see is they want to see Aldo fight McGregor, right? They don't give a fuck if they weigh in at 145

and then rehydrate back up to whatever the hell they weighed before that. That's nonsense. What they should do is figure out where these guys are healthy. Like, where are you healthy? And then we're going to see the best fight out of these guys. The problem is the title. The title is everything, right? You want to be Chris Weidman is the UFC middleweight champion is the title. The title is everything, right? You want to be Chris Weidman

is the UFC middleweight champion of the world. If Chris Weidman releases his title and says, I can't make the UFC's 185 pound limit anymore because of this new non-IV using policy, so I'm just going to drop the title. Chris Weidman could still have huge super fights because he's Chris Weidman and everybody knows he's a bad motherfucker. So if he decided to fight at 205 or whatever, people are going to line up. It doesn't matter if it's for the title. He's got a name. Ronda Rousey has a name.

Conor has a name. But there's a lot of guys that just don't have a name. So for those guys, that title is critical. The difference between Robbie Lawler fighting Carlos Condit just in a fight and Robbie Lawler fighting Carlos Condit as a champion, it's a big goddamn difference. It's a big difference. And that's unfortunate because I think that the situation that they're in right now where they have to hit the specific weight class, I think we should match guys up based on their size and not based on weighing in 24 hours beforehand at a very specific weight.

I think it's dangerous, and I also think it's irrelevant. I don't think it matters. I mean, I think there's advantages that guys would have if they were more than a certain amount over their opponent or less than a certain amount. There's a way that you could mitigate that, though. There's a way that you could figure out like what what what is the range that these guys could weigh in but make sure that they are within the range of dehydration within the range of body composition and then they're not fucking with the numbers any let's find out what you actually weigh

what it would what is johnny hendrix actually weigh when he fights when johnny hendrix is at his best that's where johnny hendrix should be fighting what about tyron woodley all those guys and figure out where everybody belongs and then compete at that level. But everybody's competing for titles. And I think that is part of the problem is the 155-pound title, the 170-pound title. But really, what we want to see is the best fighters fighting against the best fighters. That's where the money's at. Yeah, I hear you. I don't think there's a simple answer to this. I think it's, you know, it's a process and steps.

I mean, all I can say is, and I already am being this, but I'm going to be the squeaky wheel here that, you know, hopefully at some point squeaks enough that, you know, gets some grease into this. And in terms of the fighters, hey, I have just one interest in mind. I have one goal and one interest, and that's looking out for their health short and long-term with everything we're doing with this anti-doping program, with the IV ban. I mean, it is ultimately, I challenge anyone to say that I don't have that at the forefront of what we're trying to do here. I certainly think you do, but I just think that the IV ban without some sort of weight class management is almost like counterintuitive.

I think there has to be something that allows these guys who they've, you know, if a guy like Weidman has worked so hard to get to the 185-pound title, all of a sudden he can't make it anymore because he can't use IVs. It just seems ridiculous. Or because you have a policy that he's too dehydrated and you check him and you find out what he's doing to get to 185. Even though he's been doing this whole career, you guys step in and say, hey, this is too dangerous, and we're not going to allow you to do it anymore. That's, you know, it's kind of crazy if he's got to move up 20 pounds.

He's already talked about fighting Jon Jones. A statement he made recently, and it's one of the things I love about this guy said he wants to fight the best guys in the world and he says if Weidman or if John Jones rather comes back he goes I have to fight this guy because he's the best and I'm not leaving the sport until I fight John Jones and because he's the best at 205 and so he wants to do that but I just think that I think that making the weight cut and making that weight class is probably reducing his career and probably reducing a lot of these athletes' careers. They can do it. They get through it.

But at what price? And that price is, I'm sure, cumulative. It has to be. Yeah, I hear everything you're saying, Joe. The only thing I say is this program has been up and running now for a month, month and a half. They're not going to listen to me, man. They've got to listen to you. They think I'm crazy.

You've got to talk to them. Weight classes. More weight classes. And all the people, fuck that, you're going to water down the sport. Shut up, dummies. Shut up, all of you. You don't know what you're talking about. This fucking sport is so filled with crazy people.

They're willing to do anything to win. I mean, that's one of the things about the weight cut is that the amount of effort, the titanic effort that it takes to get down to some of these weight classes and rehydrate and compete against world-class athletes in the toughest sport in the world 24 hours later. It's just nuts.

They're superhuman on so many levels so many levels their fighting skills their ability to you know withstand pain it's just incredible the mental toughness too the mental toughness that it takes to go through those weight cuts and then compete 24 hours later it's just insane so we were talking earlier about the designer drugs that you're catching people on or these drugs that they're testing, like you were talking about the cyclist. Is there anything else that's like that that you may see coming up? Possibly. I mean, I don't have anything for you here today, but there's constantly drugs in clinical trial phase that could have an application to, you know, performance enhancement. And how do you guys stay on top of that stuff? Like, what is, what's the method of making sure that you're aware of every new thing that these guys are doing to try to get some sort of an advantage and when these things should be legal and illegal?

Yeah, well, it's, I mean, that mean, that's the role of the anti-doping authorities and USADA who we use, and they constantly interact and interface with the pharmaceutical industry so that when they know these things are in the pipeline, they can get a look at, hey, what's potentially performance enhancing or not. I think the pharmaceutical company has been pretty cooperative about it. I mean, you know, financially they could probably care less, but, you know, it doesn't look good, I think, when they have a product like an EPO, which is a great drug for, you know, someone who has cancer or is anemic and helps your body create red blood cells that you need to live.

Great drug. But then, you know, most of the press about it is athletes that are using it to cheat. So I think it's good, you know, most of the press about it is athletes that are using it to cheat. So I think it's good, you know, from a reputation standpoint for the pharmaceutical industry to, you know, get on top of these things and seeing what the application could be and helping anti-doping with that. Is there a window where these guys are going to be able to use certain things that you guys haven't caught on to yet that are actually legal for them at a certain point, like some natural supplements, perhaps that turn out to be like a little bit too effective? Like, how do you make that distinction?

Potentially. And that really lies with WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. And they are constantly monitoring things. There are certain things, I forget what it was, we were talking last week, but they have things on their watch list so that something like you just talked about could be some type of legal supplement and they're taking a look at it and studying it. What are the performance enhancing benefits? Does it have side effects where that, you know, if you had athlete A and say, hey, I don't want to risk myself to those side effects. So I don't want to use that even if it is legal. Is somebody gaining an unfair advantage because they're willing to risk those side effects? So it's a constant monitoring process being done by the top level anti-doping authority,

which is WADA. Now, what about unintentional contamination? Anderson Silva just got through this big, crazy trial in Vegas, which I'm sure you watched that. I was in the front row. I was right behind him. What the hell was that about? The songs that kept playing?

That hearing was disturbing on so many levels. Explain to people what I'm talking about, because if they hear it from me, they're going to think I'm kidding. Like, explain what was going on. So they had a little conference call device, which they had actually a couple scientists on the line for that were testifying about some of his tests. And somebody out there was able to get the number. which they had actually a couple scientists on the line for that were testifying about some of his tests. And somebody out there was able to get the number and in the middle of the hearing was playing these songs. Let's talk about sex.

Yeah, he was testifying about the Cialis that he thought was Cialis that he was using. And a Shaggy song came on. Yeah. Salt-N-Pepa song came on. Yeah, songs about sex kept coming on during the... It was such a zoo. The whole thing was just so ridiculous. Yeah, it wasn't good. It was great for people that were paying attention.

I mean, the courtroom burst out in laughter. Yeah, but it's sad. Somebody's career reputation at stake. Right. I mean, to me, I'm all about having a little humor inject into things, but I hated to see that well, I Can't say I did it. It was just too funny to me I think the whole thing was odd in the first place the the argument is for folks who?

Hadn't heard it that he was taking or the excuses that he was taking liquid Cialis heard it that he was taking or the excuse is that he was taking liquid cialis that was apparently made in the laboratory that also made steroids and that this liquid cialis was tainted unintentionally like you get a vat of stuff and you mix it all together and then you throw the new stuff in the next vat and you haven't cleaned it his story was it was liquid cialis from a friend that he recently got to know that came from Thailand in a blue unmarked vial, which yeah, it's crazy. But if you're going to make something up, would you really make that up? I would lead, lend more credibility to that story because of the personal nature of taking it. And maybe the embarrassing, the embarrassment around

taking that he could have come in and said, Hey, I used a protein powder and found something in it. Right. I would lend some more credibility to that. Well, you know, I had alluded to that on this show. I didn't didn't express the exact nature of the issue, but I'd known about this for a long time. I'd heard about the liquid Cialis excuse for a long time. But if I'm correct, hadn't he said that he had taken that same steroid while he was healing

from his broken leg? I'm pretty sure that he had said that he had taken it before to heal his broken leg, and what he was surprised was that he had tested negative during camp, but then positive after the fight, and that's when they decided to check out

the liquid Cialis. I wasn't aware of that. That didn't come up in the hearing. Yeah, that's why Boss Rooten was critical of it. Boss Rooten was saying that he's changed his story more than once. And Boss was saying that this is what he had said, that he had taken it to heal up his leg. And then it was this new excuse with the liquid cialis and if there's a lesson i learned over the years of seeing so many of these high profile athletes kind of get brought to the table and you know their reputations kind of tarnish forever is come to the table and just be transparent it missed missed. Exactly. Transparency. The public's very forgiving, very forgiving, especially in a sport like this, where most people believe that a large percentage of the athletes at one point in time have done

something that at least now would not be legal, including testosterone replacement, which was legal just a little bit more than a year ago in Nevada. Yeah. I mean, again, going back to what I said, the understanding of why things happen, my personal understanding of why athletes chose to go that route, I think most of the public would be like that. Hey, there wasn't much testing going on, you know, maybe a couple weeks out the night of the fight. You know, you were probably stupid if you weren't doing something based on your risk in your life every time you got in there. So definitely under those old circumstances, now under the new one here,

I don't think people should be as forgiving because everybody should know now how serious this is, that it's year round, that there are serious consequences and the risk is far going to outweigh the reward, hopefully. Now, as far as inadvertent contamination, as far as inadvertent contamination, as far as accidental dosing, if you buy something from some protein powder or vitamin that comes from some shop, you know, and you don't know, you know, it's supposed to boost testosterone naturally or something like that. And then it turns out it has steroids in it. How often does that happen?

Is that a real issue with athletes or is it a bullshit excuse they use to cover up the fact they took steroids? Very real issue. So my, the career I just left to come to the UFC, I was with the food and drug administration office of criminal investigation. We investigated the dietary sports supplement industry and there's hundreds of products out there on the shelves, not prescription, over the counter, with steroids and other substances, which would cause our athletes to test positive for. And as we're getting out and going out and educating our athletes, that is a huge portion of the education. It is that you have to be more than careful, extreme careful about what you take.

Ultimately, you're liable for everything that goes into your body. Hey, we'll be here and we'll be a resource for you to help kind of wade through those issues and those landmines that are out there. But ultimately, you're responsible for what goes in your body. Now, we have built in our policy mitigating factors that can reduce sanctions so that if somebody did test positive for a steroid, they were able to show because they kept a sample of it. They told us what the lot number, what the bottle was. Someone went and got that off the shelf to ensure that, hey, they didn't just spike the sample they had, that there was that steroid in it, that there were other circumstances about, you know,

occurrences like that. Something like that could be grounds for a reduction in sanction to as low as maybe a public warning for the first time, maybe. But nevertheless, there's still going to be some type of sanction, and that'll be your first one, so that the next one that came about could double potential penalties. So it's a tough issue, man, one that I worry about a lot because all of our fighters take supplements. We're not going to get up there and say, don't take supplements,

anybody. I don't think that's realistic. But isn't that kind of contradicting? If you think about the fact that all these athletes take supplements, right? Why are they taking supplements? Why? To gain a performance enhancing advantage, right? I mean, how much of an advantage are we talking about? We're talking supplements. You're talking, you know, derivatives of food. We're not talking drugs here. But some of these derivatives of food have been known to enhance testosterone development or production. Theoretically. You know, I haven't seen some of these natural testosterone boosters. You know, Personally, I think a lot of it's hocus-pocus and just marketing and sales pitches. Well, the standard ones, things like creatine, we know that has an athletic advantage.

There's a performance-enhancing benefit of creatine. But creatine's legal, right? It is, yeah. So the amount is just small enough so that it's under the wire? It doesn't reach this steroid-like level where you guys have to step in and say you can't use it. Yeah, I guess that would be the reasoning why WADA has not prohibited creatine, in terms of the level of what it's really going to do for you. It's minor.

Is there an avenue that fighters have where they can send you guys stuff that they're thinking about taking, and then you could test it? Like say if a guy is at, you know, some vitamin store or something like that and see some human growth hormone booster that's off amino acids and totally natural. I'm like, ah, I don't know, man. Can we, can they send it to you? Uh, no, we don't have anything in place where they can send it to us. That would be, you know, I'm sure we get inundated with things and be spending money. We could be spending on testing on that. But what they do do is, shoot, I get 20 to 30 a week maybe emails from athletes about, hey, here's what I'm taking.

Can I take this one, that one? And typically what I do is forward that to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, where they actually have a PhD woman who's, she is probably the nation's expert on dietary supplements. And she buys, USADA will buy on their own 100 or so a year and test them themselves. They actually have a website that lists a lot of these that have tested positive for substances that would, you know, be a positive test under our program. So, yeah, we're constantly answering questions, providing resources, but ultimately I tell everybody and they're disappointed and I say, I could never give you 100% green light to take something. I can't on the other side say 100%

don't touch that one. I can give you red flags. But you know, even, you know, the most reputable company that sells, you know, their vitamin in Costco, you don't know about that one bottle from that one batch. I'll give you the horror story of all time. It's in the news, you can Google it and read it. But there was a vitamin company that had a vitamin B, I don't know if it was 12, I think it was, manufactured in Long Island a couple years back. And the guy that was manufacturing it on the run before the vitamin did a run of a raw product that he got from some guy in the south, ran that through the machine with instructions of how much to put in each capsule, sent that off to the guy in the south. The vitamin company's product is next on the machine. He didn't clean the machine off well enough. And that previous product had a designer anabolic steroid, Superdrawl, methasterone, which is one of the most powerful anabolic steroids. It's orally taken.

That got into the B12. The B12, I'm thinking it was maybe, I mean, it was a reputable retail store where it was sold. A week or two later, elderly people started presenting themselves at hospitals in this area where it was being sold with yellow eyes, yellow palms, because they were ingesting a vitamin that had this very toxic steroid in it, and they were getting sick from liver damage. Luckily, that's the extreme, but there have been cases of... And then we start talking the sports supplement industry, which is testosterone boosters, maybe more edgy stuff.

You see that happen way more often. I invite you after. Go on USADA's site. It's publicly available. It's Supplement 411. They have listed all of the dietary supplements that they bought this year and tested. I was just looking at it last night. I don't know if it's over 100, but it's probably more than 50 in there, which the public can still go out and buy. They're on the shelves of stores, and they contain, in many instances, anabolic steroids, in all instances, compounds which cause our athletes to test positive.

Wow, that's crazy. There's that many of these things. Here it is right here. There it is. Supplement 411, realize, recognize, and reduce. So if you scroll down. Scroll down and see the list. Keep going.

Oh, go back up a little bit. High-risk list there on the left. High-risk supplement products. Now, you're going to gonna have to enter you can put my name in there maybe put joe's name in there you have to put a name i think the idea behind my name in there motherfucker the idea behind that is actually a protection of the athletes so that if you went in there um and you put your name in and then later said, hey, I went and searched, you know, you saw the site, there would be a record of you having searched that. All right, let's see what we got here.

Okay, you got it. What do we got? There you go. All these different... You're scrolling down, but scroll the page down first so we get a full screen. So there you go. All these different. You're scrolling down, but scroll the page down first so we get a full screen. So there you go. Andro Liquid. And that stuff has got DHEA.

Product contains a list of prohibited substance. Label lists a prohibited substance. Product contains prohibited substance testing. Revealed presence of one androstenediol. And that stuff's illegal now, though, isn't it? Androstenediol, those pro-hormones, you used to be able to sell those. There is.

There was a new law passed. It was late last year or early this year. The Designer Antibiotic Steroid Control Act, or DASCA. And it basically made it easier to quantify some of these designer drugs as steroids and took a whole bunch of known ones that weren't on the steroid list yet and converted them to controlled substances. But here, we're still only at the A's on the antibiotic name on the list. This is a crazy list.

Look, look at all this stuff. A lot of it is Zanderstein dial. Yeah. Wow. This is amazing. Wow. This is amazing. Now, it used to be just a few years ago that you could basically, I mean, I guess more than a decade ago now, but you could basically buy steroids from like GNC. I mean, the stuff that they had was oral steroids. Yeah. There's still some of these out there. They've just become more designer nature. Look at the fucking list of prohibited substance and this angel does shit. Oh, my God. Wow.

Okay. Well, we'll leave it to anybody who wants to look into this. Yeah. So, I mean, our athletes, we're constantly directing them toward that. Obviously, if it's on this list, don't take it. But there's hundreds of others, you know, that aren't on that list. They only have so much time and resources to buy these. They could probably hire another two or three PhDs and buy these full time and and triple or quadruple that list based on what I know of the industry.

That's crazy. So an athlete going to a vitamin store and just buying a bunch of these things off the counter, there's a very good possibility that he's going to get actual steroids in those things. Yeah, I'd be very concerned. And that's why we pass along to them. They should be concerned. Now, the story that you told about the B12 is really disturbing because I would think that if they cleaned it at all, how would it be possible these trace amounts would get into these people's vitamins to the point where they're getting sick from liver damage from this toxic steroid? They obviously didn't do a good job. Or didn't clean it at all, it seems like. You know, so the dietary, the laws in here in the United States and, you know, for foods and dietary supplement, there's no pre-market review of a product.

So you and I, and in fact, I think the Bells you had on last week as part of Bigger, Faster, Stronger did a little piece on what the dietary supplement industry is. And I think he hired a couple people off the street to make supplements and showed you could put them right to the shelf. That's accurate. So it's up to the FDA after the fact, after something's already been on the shelf, after probably somebody's already got sick or hurt, unless you have somebody in the FDA being very proactive, which I tell you coming from the FDA, they're not proactive. They're a reactive agency that typically either a complaint has to be made or somebody gets hurt before they go out and, you know, enforce what the law is. That product shouldn't be on the shelf. They need to do a much, much better job. And especially in my position now where I have this, you know, group of athletes,

which I feel very fatherly over, I would call on the FDA to do a way better job than what I saw was happening on the inside. It's a huge organization, mostly regulatory. I was on the criminal side, but they have a huge population of regulatory employees that they could be doing a much better job in managing and taking these products off the shelf. It just seems almost like there's no way to keep up with it. I mean, you looked at so many different supplements right there that just were the letter A. And how many of them all told do they have on their list? Jamie, you could answer that.

How many, if you see, is there a number that shows how many they have? No, these were all even just tested this year. She's been doing that for a period of years. Oh, my God. That tested this year. Right. She's been doing that for a period of years. Oh, my God. That's so crazy. Wow. Because, you know, you'd heard about that before from athletes. We've all heard, you know, that he took a supplement and it turned out to have a banned substance in it and inadvertently tested positive for steroids. And a lot of times you think they're full of shit and that's just their excuse.

But, wow, I'm looking at it a different way right now because of that. Yeah, it's no doubt concerning. Now, what about, is it possible that one of these things like an HVAC machine or altitude training, is it possible that one of those things will eventually be so effective that you guys are going to have to think about banning that as well? I don't know. I mean, we're following the WADA prohibited list and WADA prohibited method. So it ultimately would be if WADA decided this, it would fall under our program. And actually under our program, you know, I think we'd have the ability to evaluate it and determine whether or not we wanted to adopt it.

We likely would. I mean, WADA is the gold standard, and they're not just arbitrarily throwing things out there that wouldn't give someone an unfair advantage to put on their prohibited list. So we'd follow along, likely. Now, one of the things that I really wanted to make sure I talked to you about because it was one that really raised my eyebrows when we were talking in Brazil is gene doping. And it seems like we are at this

very strange point when it comes to technology and innovation that they're, it's, I don't think they're more than a decade away from doing something very bizarre to human bodies where it might be undetectable or might be so prevalent that it might change the rules. be undetectable or might be so prevalent that it might change the rules. If you're aware of CRISPR, do you know about this innovation that they created in 2012 called CRISPR that allows them to much more efficiently manipulate genes? And they're doing it mostly, you know, they're testing it in non-viable embryos in China and they're doing it in different animals and different things. But the idea being is that within a certain amount of time, it's just undoubtedly going to be something

that they experiment with with people. In fact, I have a friend who knows someone that was, they were traveling to the Middle East where in this one lab, they were performing these tests where they were going to make it so that you could determine, I mean, this is all, a lot of it is in the preliminary stages and a lot of it is, it hasn't been totally proven that it's effective, but they're going to be able to manipulate eye color. They're going to be able to manipulate sex, change the hair color. They're going to be able to do all sorts of different things to, to the baby in the embryonic stage to change what they are as adults. And the idea of creating a super athlete through genetic manipulation is not that far away.

It's crazy. Um, you know, I know anti-doping when they get together many times during the year and have their conferences and bring together leading scientists, it's almost always, you know, one or two hour block on where gene doping is going, where it is now. Where is it now? I don't know the technicalities of where it is now, how close athletes are doing it. But, God, man, you talk about taking a risk. One thing to take a drug, but when you're manipulating your gene, who knows, you know, in one or two years what that's going to do to you. It feels like an X-Men movie, though, doesn't it? It does, like Jurassic Park, you know, or getting out of control real quick.

I mean, have you seen that happening? I'm talking about Wolverine. Guy heals like that insane yeah yeah i mean jurassic park wolverine although i mean i just feel like there people are going to be the first to take the leap there's going to be someone or some government or some you know who it's going to be it's going to be the bodybuilding community and every drug that i've seen used in athletics, performance and anti-benefits, that is the community that always tries it first. Those guys are willing to risk anything. What is it, get big or die trying?

Kind of the motto. That is very common. I saw it firsthand. They're willing to try and be the guinea pig for anything. And those fucking guys die young. They do. to try and be the guinea pig for anything if they can get a little bit bigger. And those fucking guys die young. They do. A lot of those guys die young. They're usually the ones that refine how the drugs are taken

and determine, hey, this, even though it's marketed or promoted for this, actually it will do this for you as well. And saw that firsthand where non-bodybuilding athletes would rely on advice from them of how to do it and what the effects were. Well, they take things like insulin, right? Which is super dangerous, isn't it? No doubt, yeah. Make you a diabetic real quick.

Myostatin inhibitors. That's something that I have been fascinated. Ever since I saw a photo of those whippets that have that genetic. Crazy, huh? It's just an aberration in the whippets from breeding. And they've been able to manipulate cows and pigs and cause it to happen now. And pigs, I think, are the latest ones they've been able to do it to where they have double muscle. Yeah, I've seen some of those photos. Insane.

And they've been able to do it to mice. And the fucked up thing about mice is they live longer they've doubled their lifespan i think and they look awesome go to the beach flex they look like kevin randleman mice i mean what is uh what's going to happen when that stuff makes its way into mma what do you do yeah i mean my guessing and anti-doping is you're going to, at some point, get to some type of gene testing and the ability to look at human genes and see if they've been manipulated or inhibited. But what if someone has a natural manipulation? Like there's a boy that was born, I think it's been more than one person, but I know of one that

was born in Germany that has that same issue that these cows have and these whippets have. And this young boy, there he is. Jesus fucking Christ. Is that real? That's not real. Oh, come on. Is that real? Wait a minute.

Scroll up. Scroll up. Don't, hold on. How genetic engineering to make us look like bodybuilders naturally. Scroll down so I can hear what, shoot. In the past post, well, look into this because this might be bullshit cuz that's Chris Bell right there posing with that cow that's from bigger stronger faster find out if because I know there was a young boy who looked different than that cuz I looked

like a kid with an adult arm the other one looked like a kid that had like a six-pack and was it was really. He had really thick leg muscles and they were saying that this child was born without that gene, the myostatin inhibitor gene, and that this is something that's, it might be him. Yeah, myostatin muscle inhibitor. That looks real. Like, look at that. That does look real. That kid is fucking shredded. Look at his six pack. That's nonsense. He looks like he's got a turtle shell growing out of his stomach. Jesus Christ.

That kid is going to be a stud. So what do you do with a kid like that? If a kid like that wants to compete in the UFC, do you say, no, you're a mutant? You have to compete in the X-Men games? Yeah, I don't know. I always like seeing that genetic freak of nature that comes along every once in a while. The Herschel Walker. Whether it's Herschel Walker or even like Babe Ruth who had a boiler on him but was

obviously strong as hell. So maybe he's one of those cool people that come along once every generation and everybody can get behind because they're knowing that that's real. I don't know. Well, it's real, but it's also a genetic freak accident. I mean, he is definitely a real kid. I mean, he wasn't born, as far as we know, wasn't created in a lab, but he has some sort of a freak advantage.

Well, doesn't, I mean, LeBron James is a genetic freak accident, is he? I mean, one could argue that. Yeah, no, you absolutely can, and you would be right, but he's not competing in fighting. I see. That is a little bit more extreme there. I don't know how you deal with that. I mean, obviously, he's going to be able to show through medical records that it's been that way all through his life and didn't just suddenly appear when he was 16 and did manipulate his genes. So, I mean, I guess you can show that it was natural.

I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. It seems like for your job, it seems like there's like a window of time for you to enact change before all this crazy genetic shit starts rolling in from China and Russia and who knows where, not accusing China and Russia, but they have been known to do some funky things in the past. Yeah. You know, I worked part of my last job. I worked at the airmail facility at San Francisco International Airport.

And part of that job was to monitor everything coming in from China and the stuff that came through there. And my primary focus was on drugs and raw product and compounds that were put into dietary supplements here. But the majority of bad stuff going into these supplements coming here, that's where it's coming from. From China. It is. Yep. They don't have a lot of rules over there. They don't. And that's why it's also scary. The manufacturing standards over there aren't good so that they'll send something over to a U.S. manufacturer here saying, hey, here's what's in this product or this raw compound. And the U.S. manufacturer will take that at its word and really not know what's going into his product.

And that's why often you see supplements that don't have on the label what's really in them. It's not cost effective for them to test every batch and every lot that comes in. So you see a lot of that as well. Well, I learned from the Sopranos that most of the shipping containers that come into the United States don't get tested. Isn't that true? The volume that comes in, it would be in pot. You'd have to hire a million or two million people to inspect everything. So they target things.

I mean, they intelligently target, you know, depending on what areas it comes from and what, you know, what it's declared at. But no, there's the percentage of things that actually do get looked at and tested is pretty low. It's just kind of disturbing. Wow. It's just, it's amazing to consider that there's so many shipping containers that are coming in from somewhere like China on a daily basis and who knows what could be possibly in them. Scary. Yeah. Now, as far as like what is prohibited and banned right now, how many different things are prohibited and banned? We could actually pull up WADA's got their prohibited list available. One of the cool things about our policy is how transparent it is. Everything that we're doing, our rules, the UFC rules, our fighters can go look at, their support personnel can look

at, the public can go look at. They can look at the water prohibited lists, the water prohibited method. It's out there for everyone to see. Another thing that, you know, a lot of people are surprised at this, but actually when we, as our testing, we're testing now, but it goes forward and starts really in earnest. USADA will start posting who's tested and how many times they're tested by athlete name. By the end of this year, public can pull up the USADA UFC website and say, oh, UFC fighter A was tested eight times. UFC fighter B, they were tested three times. Total transparency. And that's done, again, to go back to what we talked about earlier trust and credibility of the system it's it's paramount it's huge for us for usada to be able

to say we're not hiding anything here it's all out in the open what we're doing so that athlete you know if you don't really think you know what's going on or think this is going here it's all out there in the open for you. Take a look at exactly what we're doing. It's one of the things that people found disturbing about the Anderson Silva allegations was that it was revealed that he had never been tested outside of competition except this one time where he tested negative. Most of our athletes fall under that same circumstance.

Nevada, California started doing it too. It was probably the best. I think maybe New Jersey where they would do what we call enhanced testing, where they would maybe take the top two or three fights on a card and go out for maybe six weeks. That was the extent of any out of competition tests. You know, as we educate, we're going out to different gyms, we're educating the fight cards on the Wednesday before Saturday fight. We usually ask the question, hey, who's been tested other than, you know, a day of the competition test? Very few hands go up, you know, maybe a couple per session.

So, yeah, I mean, in terms of, again, understanding why an athlete will do something, hey, when you're not testing anybody, unless it's on the day of the fight, which is really just an IQ test. As long as you're smart enough to know how fast a drug will clear your system, you could easily use drugs in the past and get off them a week or two ahead of time, have them clear your system and maintain the benefits of those drugs, most of them, through the fight. So is it any surprise why, especially when you're risking your health and in some arguments your life when you're getting in that octagon, is it any surprise why a lot of athletes have made that under really no testing in the past? It's not to me. But a guy like Anderson Silva, who's widely considered to be,

if not the greatest of all time, one of the top two or three greatest of all time, the fact that he was only tested once out of competition and failed, that's really disturbing to a lot of people. They go, well, you know, you're looking at these spectacular performances that he was able to have. Who knows what he was under or on when he pulled those off? Yeah, I mean, and not just, you know. It taints a legacy. Looking at him individually, but yeah, you extrapolate that out with, you know, everybody in this sport that likely, you know, if he wasn't tested out of competition, how about

the other 549 behind him if he's at the top of the game? So you extrapolate that out. It's scary. So, hey, we'll see real quick here i mean i think a lot of it though early on is and then thank you for this platform today but just getting the message out being that to turn effect up front you know having those athletes in support look now saying okay the game's changed now it's no longer you're not going to be tested you don't trust your opponents now the game's changed that they're using every method and tool available. They're using blood,

urine. They're testing for specific drugs. They're looking at a biological passport. So if a specific drug doesn't show up, they could catch somebody that way. Hell, they're freezing our blood and urine that if a test isn't available today, it may be in a year or two and they'll go back and test that. And then maybe if I'm not fighting, my legacy is done. Hopefully, everybody's hearing all these things that we're doing. Hearing me talk about experiences I've had with athletes in the past, about how damn stressful it's going to be for a UFC athlete right now to use drugs and get away with it. They are going to be thinking about that 24 seven. I guarantee you. Oh shit. Who's coming tomorrow. Okay. How long do I got before this clears my system? Can I trust the

person that's telling me that all this shit's going to be happening from now out? And the hope would be being that to turn up front. So the decisions made on the front end, okay, this is something we can do now, as opposed to all of a sudden dozens of positive tests on the back end. The hope is I can get out and do a good enough job of expressing how serious this is going to be that our population of fighter hear that. Now, what about the difference between in competition and out of competition testing and as far as like what the penalties are for out of competition testing? And what about recreational drugs in competition and out-of-competition testing? Like, John Jones tested positive for cocaine, and it was out of competition,

so he was still allowed to compete, and a lot of people were kind of critical of that. Like, well, how is that possible that you test a guy, he tests positive for a banned substance, and yet he's still allowed to compete and you don't even hear about it? But the results were known before he fought, and they never went public. Yeah, I mean, a lot of different issues there. So let me, one at a time. So first, our UFC policy. So out of competition, the test for out of competition drugs,

those drugs or those substances will be your hard substances, your anabolic steroids, your human growth hormones, your blood doping type drugs. Those are tested for both out and in. Those are tested 365 days a year. In competition, and the definition of in competition under our policy is six hours before the weigh-in to six hours after the fight. During that period of time, the drugs tested will be your drugs of abuse, your recreational drugs, marijuana, tested will be your drugs of abuse, your recreational drugs, marijuana, stimulants,

including cocaine, other drugs. So there's only really a 48-hour or so window that those will be tested for. Those recreational drugs are not tested for out of competition. In the John Jones situation, that was a Nevada State Athletic Commission test. They had the same rules at the time. Drugs of abuse were to be tested for only in competition my understanding drugs of abuse you mean recreational recreational drugs i'm sorry yeah some my understanding is somebody made a mistake and checked the box to do recreational drugs in an out of competition collection oh so he wasn't supposed to be tested for cocaine correct they you know their't supposed to be tested for cocaine. Correct. They, you know, their policy was not to test for cocaine, marijuana, other stimulants out of competition.

It was a mistake of checking a box. So when it turns out positive, he's not punished for it because they weren't supposed to test for it in the first place. That's my understanding. Yep. Okay. Okay. Um, you know, it's unfortunate. I don't like when any mistakes are made like that I think you know even though it was Nevada State Athletic Commission it taints the entire anti-doping you know arena I think anti-doping needs to be almost perfect because again going back to that trust and credibility factor regardless of who's doing it when they make mistakes in anti-doping, like a false positive. I mean, to me, a false positive could never happen because no one then would ever trust anything that's going on for, uh, you know, mistakes like that. Um, collection errors where

the collectors aren't going observing. If you have holes in the system and it gets out, it doesn't matter who's doing it. I think it taints all of anti-doping. And so that's one of the reasons we went to USADA is these guys have been in the business longer than anybody else. They're known as kind of the gold standard entity in all the world. They are in that business. They've been doing it for 15 years. They know what all the pitfalls are and they expect themselves to be perfect. And I think that's huge to lend that credibility and trust to our athletes. Nevada recently changed its levels of acceptable use of marijuana. They changed the levels of acceptable metabolites in the system. What is it at now? And you were discussing with me in Brazil, you were saying that you essentially would have to fight

high in order to test positive. Yeah, likely. So Nevada adopted, in terms of marijuana, what the WADA standard was, and that's 150 nanograms per milliliter. It probably doesn't mean much to most people, but to give you some perspective, it used to be 15 nanograms per milliliter. So they've increased it. Ten times. Ten times, exactly. So you'd have it. 10 times. 10 times, exactly.

So you'd have to be under the influence while you're fighting. Yeah, it's tough because as we're out educating, the next question we get is, hey, if I was a chronic smoker, how long would I have to be off it? It's tough to say. Each individual varies in terms of how they metabolize. The fat content on your body may store it longer. So we can't give our athletes guidance like, hey, if you do it a week out or two days out, you're fine. The only thing we can give them is just kind of what statistics have borne out.

USADA's tested all their Olympic athletes, thousands now under this standard of 150 nanograms per milliliter over the last couple years they've had very few positive tests maybe you know a couple then along comes nick diaz true i think he was under the 150 nanogram per milliliter standard at that point he was under yeah but he still tested positive i mean he was over that oh he was under but he still tested positive. He was over that. Oh, he was over when I'm in under he fell under Oh that standard so what was what was his test results? I don't know specifically what it was other than it would have been over 150 so he essentially fought high probably respect Imagine that you're not just fighting Anderson Silva you're fighting him while you're stoned

Damn Nick Nick Diaz is a beast I mean I don't advise it but I respect it it's kind of crazy though right that you could uh fight in the UFC in the main event like that yeah I don't you know I was a I was a basketball player a college basketball player and uh you know when i played i had guys on my team that would get stoned before practice um dominate practice yeah people love it jujitsu too jujitsu it's a huge part of the jujitsu world so many guys like you go to a lot of jujitsu schools and you'll see the parking lot before everybody goes into training guys are smoking pot it's very very common because they feel like it puts them in a zone my own own personal experience, I feel like it does. It puts me in a zone.

It makes me understand the techniques better. It gives you more of a sensitivity to training. Well, how about in the MMA world because you're worried about so many different things, a strike, a take. You've got so many things to worry about. I mean, do you find that you're focusing in on one thing and you're not paying attention to? No, no, no, no, no, no. Unless you're not ready. This is what I find.

I find that it's not that good for learning things. I find that when you're learning something, especially like if you're drilling something, I find that drilling is better done sober. Like I'm better off at learning things sober. But once something is committed to my nervous system, once I understand how to do the move, there's certain positions that just fall into. The way Eddie Bravo describes it best, I love this analogy, is like, you know how when you tie your shoes, you don't even think about it.

You just tie your shoes. Because you've tied your shoes every day for your whole life, and it just becomes natural. There's certain positions where you find yourself sinking into submission you don't even know what's happening until you've done it because you've done it so many times in drills that it just becomes automatic those are enhanced by marijuana but the learning part I feel like you sometimes you don't get all the finer details but maybe that's me yeah I think there's also the possibility that everybody has their own different way of, uh, uh, experiencing marijuana, the biodiversity aspect of human beings. It's some people just don't like it at all. I have friends that just

can't do it. They'll smoke a little pot and they're like, fuck, they just hate it. It freaks them out. They don't like doing anything on it. And then other people, they like doing everything on it. So I don't know, I don't know what other folks feel but for me I feel like I learned things better when I'm not high but I feel like once I'm once I understand something it just become you know it's been it's like a second nature thing then I feel like I'm more tuned in if that makes any sense yeah it is as interesting because there's the argument out there from a lot like why is that even banned that's not how's marijuana performance enhancing

so it's it's interesting to hear you say that i think it can be a performance enhancing drug i really do well how about how about deadening you know it's obviously used for pain relief so i mean what do you think about it could mask pain certainly could it's certainly possible it's definitely not you're it's not. You're not you're not sober So the the idea that anything that you could use that could possibly give you an advantage I just know it gives you an advantage in jiu-jitsu. I know it does I know so many guys use it so many guys roll with it like big-name guys that are high level jiu-jitsu competitors They train high every time and they love it And I just think you can't ignore that.

I think that it's quite possible that there's an advantage to using it. And then the pain relief aspect of it, look, you can't fight on pain pills. And if there was a pain blocker that allowed you to not feel impacts of strikes, and you just went out there and fought and dealt with the consequences tomorrow when it wore off, that would be illegal for sure. Well, marijuana is absolutely used to help people with pain management. Absolutely. So I don't think it should be legal to compete with.

I just think there's too many possibilities. I also don't think a lot of testing has been done on the performance-enhancing aspects of marijuana. But what has been revealed recently is the enhancing aspects of marijuana but what has been revealed recently is the benefits that ultra marathon runners experience with doing marijuana that they can push through better put their mind in a different place and not yeah focus on the hours and hours of monotony and i don't think you can ignore that i think i think that's certainly something that should be considered and um if you're going to ban a lot of different things, and obviously I like marijuana.

I'm an enthusiast. But I think that there's absolutely potential that it could be a performance-enhancing drug in a lot of ways. People have mocked me on that for a long time. But now that these new studies are coming out, especially with ultramarathon runners, I feel vindicated. Jeff, I feel vindicated. Good for you. Thank you. Is there anything else we should cover?

We pretty much nailed almost everything. The comprehensive aspect of the drug testing policy, the randomness. I believe the top athletes are going to be tested five times a year randomly. Is that what's going on now? I think if you look at the average with our population versus how many tests that were contracted to do or that you saw this contracted to do with us, it'll average to that. But, you know, again, everybody will be able to go on and see starting soon here who's tested by name, how many times. And you're not going to see across the board five for everybody. Likely you're going to see 10 or a dozen per year for some people.

Really? Maybe two or three. And it's not sorry. it's not random testing. It's intelligent testing. USADA is not going to say, hey, we're going to roll the dice and whoever comes up, they're going to look at everything from tips they may get. Hell, they'll even look at physical appearances of athletes. You know, does this athlete pass kind of the physical appearance smell test? And if they don't, hey, maybe we need to test that person a little bit more.

The physical appearance smell test. Really? So like, like, what would you like? You look at a guy and you go, man, that guy just looks juiced. He looks different. Come on. You've seen it. Yeah, but I don't know, man.

I mean, I've seen it on guys that have tested negative and I've seen guys that have been accused of things, but they've tested negative every time. I agree. Rafael Dos Anjos. Rafael Dos Anjos was the UFC lightweight champion. When he beat Pettis, and he beat Pettis in such a convincing way, boy, there were so many people accusing that guy of being on performance-enhancing drugs. But if you look at his body over the years, it really hasn't varied that much. A little bit from the first time he was in the UFC, but that was before he was on a comprehensive strength and conditioning program. You look at him, like, over the last few years, he's pretty consistent.

But yet once he wins the title, everybody starts pointing fingers at him. And if you look at him, like, pull up a picture of Rafael Dos Anjos, UFC lightweight champion of the world. When he is fighting and when he's in shape and he's fit, yeah, he looks like I would like to look. Like if you were on steroids, I would say people would take steroids if they could look like this guy. So does he pass the smell test?

Like see if you could find a picture of him where he just looks jacked. There's a picture of him over in the far left up there. That's him after he beat Pettis. But look there. That looks just like an athlete. But that looks... Okay, that's a perfect one. That's him when he was fighting Pettis, I believe.

Is that from the same fight? Yeah, 185. Okay. Look at that! He's fucking shredded. His six-pack has a six-pack. I mean, but not much different physically other than, like, a little bit less body fat. I mean, he's a fucking stud, you know?

I mean, that's why he's the champ. Obviously, there's a lot of hard work that goes into that. But when people look at him, you know, you say, well, that looks like a guy who, if someone didn't look like that and they took something and looked like that, you would say, well, then the guy's on steroids. But if he always looks like that, it's hard. It's hard. I agree with you. There's outliers.

You know, over that 15-year law enforcement career I had involved with all these cases, I mean, I knew of many athletes who looked like they did who didn't, or at least no evidence appeared of it. Many who didn't look like they did, did. This is strictly, you know, another tool that's to be used. It doesn't mean all the time that, you know, an athlete that doesn't pass the smell test will test positive. But a lot of the times it does. Hey, all it means is a test. It doesn't mean that person's all you're, you're positive because you look like you did. It's like, Hey, you may be an extra test or two. And if I was that athlete that was that freak, I'd say, Hey, yeah, man, test me more. Cause people were accusing me of it. So it'll be cool at the end

of the year. Everybody will look at my stats on the webpage and see I was tested 10 times and no positive test for me here. So I'm hoping a lot of, you know, this is, it's going to be, you know, in terms of the whereabouts program, the amount of tests our athletes getting, it's going to be an inconvenience, but I'm hoping that there's a lot of acceptance and embracement of it that like, hell yeah, not only is this the baddest sport in the world, we're the toughest dude, but we have the toughest anti-doping program and bring it on. I'm hoping that there's a lot of that. And the sentiment that I get is as we're go out and talk is a lot of that. Maybe it's lip service. I don't

know, but I would like to think that, you know. It'll certainly become that. If it's not that right now, it'll certainly become that. Is there any potential for manipulation by opponents, calling into hotlines, accusing someone of something, and having them test, giving false information, you know, false tips? Sure, there always is. I could see Connor doing that. I dealt with that all the time in law enforcement, right? The first thing a tip comes in, you have to evaluate, who is this person? Are they an

ex-wife or an ex-husband? Okay. Hey, are they being sued by this? You know, you gotta evaluate that, and you saw it all do that too. So does someone have to say who they are when they give a tip, or can they leave anonymous tips? They can leave it anonymously. Yeah, if I was Conor McGregor, I'd be calling that fucking Aldo hotline all day.

I bet he would just fuck with him, you know? There's got to be guys that are going to do that, right? The brogue might give it away. I don't know. Yeah, right? This fucking shite. But a guy like, say, Dos Anjos, you know, who has that appearance, just looks absolutely shredded and is beating everybody, is automatically going to be people that point fingers at a guy like that, right?

Potentially, sure. Is there any other type of testing that they're working on that's on the pipeline that may perhaps be even more effective than what they're doing now? Oh, sure. Yeah? Sure. I mean, again, I'm not the scientist. I don't get too far in the weeds when the scientists in these conferences break off and they little group or if I ever have a lot of it goes over my head. I don't understand what they're talking about. But I mean, there's really, really smart people that their profession and life is dedicated to this arena of anti-doping, figuring out what's out there, figuring out if there's not a test for something, how to

do it and develop it. There's some super intelligent people on that mission out there. So I'd be concerned if I was using anything that at some point someone's not going to come up with a test for it or detect what it was. I would. And that's, you know, again, part of the stress that's going to be out there from someone who's still under this program, chooses to do something that's going to be stressful. Yeah. I mean, this is really the gold standard program now, isn't it? I mean, in professional sports. Okay. So there's no other professional sport that has number one, a truly independent authority administering it. And what that does is it shows you there's not going to be any business interest in carrying out the program. USADA doesn't give a shit if it's our number one earner.

If they test positive, they test positive. Doesn't benefit them, yeah. They don't care. All they care about is clean sport. There's going to be no allegations of favoritism. USADA doesn't care who the athlete is, where they live. They're all about clean sport again. care who the athlete is, where they live. They're all about clean sport again. 365 day a year. Well, first off, no other professional sports have that independent nature. Olympic sports have that. They have independent agencies, but professional sports don't. That's huge to begin with.

365 days a year testing. I mean, you look at the other professional sports here, I mean, you look at the other professional sports here, at least in the United States, they can't say that. Urine and blood tests at any point. Blood, by the way, we have a lot of concerns from athletes like, man, how much blood are you taking from me? That's going to be a deterrent. That could affect my performance if you take blood from me. It's less than a tablespoon of blood. So very little amount. Science shows it will have no effect whatsoever on your performance even later that day.

The biological passport's huge, so even if you don't find a specific drug, we can go over time and look at abnormal variances. And so you throw all those things together, and in my experience, both dealing with sports here in the US and worldwide there's no other organization that that touches what this thing is now there's some sports that you could argue really they just can't exist without performance enhancing drugs bodybuilding of course comes to the front line that's the first one that everybody thinks about if bodybuilding instituted something like this the sport would change radically overnight I mean you would see people shrink to the point where they didn't, they bared no resemblance to like Dorian Yates or Lee Haney or any of these guys that were in their prime that were

just these freaks that looked, they didn't even look like real people. Yep. I'd agree with that. But what about pro football? Like those guys are fucking gigantic. How much of that is strength and conditioning programs i mean do you know how much of that is that they didn't have those strength and conditioning programs in the 60s and how much of it is steroids and growth

hormone and yeah it's it's hard to say i mean they they do have they have and i know and i've worked with their people who are instituting their program. Their program is not independently administered. It's them. It's in-house. In-house. So say if they have a star athlete that tests positive, they can kind of sweep that over. You don't know that. I don't think that's happening because you looked at some of the athletes that have,

and I don't think that's happening. But that question would always pose itself because it is the fox guarding the hen house there. And it's not nearly as comprehensive. It's not. And one thing that I found in anti-doping programs, you could have the most solid program all the way around. If you have one little weakness in it, the tiniest weakness could be a loophole that you can drive a tractor trailer through. I gave you a perfect example. Say a program has everything that we have, 365-day-a-year testing. Say it's even,

you know, USADA administering it. And say in the collection process during the season, the collector would call up somebody on the team or in the organization the night before and say, I need a parking pass tomorrow to get in. I'm going to be showing up. That one little phone call, despite all the strength, comprehensive strength, could be the weakness that would cause everybody to run through. That employee is friends with somebody, the players on the team, knows who's hot or not, makes a call the night before, hey, man, they're coming tomorrow. Don't show up tomorrow. Do the professional sports leagues, I don't think they do, have a three-strikes-whereabout policy

where if they're not there for a certain day, then that can be used against them. Or if they're not there for that day, is the tester said, oh, I'll just get that person later. So little things like that can be manipulated to, again, drive a truck through. What did you think about the Vanderlei Silva situation? For people not aware of it, Vanderlei Silva, they showed up for a random drug test out of competition. He wasn't scheduled for a fight and just bolted. And when he bolted, they gave him a lifetime suspension they said you're done your your career is over you you avoided a drug test um what did you think about that so first under our program we have this whereabouts where you get basically three strikes in a rolling 12 months and then

there's a sanction that's if you know they just can't locate you or you didn't do a good enough job or you didn't complete your whereabouts. If a tester comes to test one of our athletes, say at a gym, says, hey, I'm here from USADA to test you, and that athlete says, screw you, and runs out the back door, that's a sanction right there, a penalty. And potentially under our system, with aggravating circumstances, could be four years. That may be an aggravating circumstance where this guy or girl said, screw you, I'm not doing this thing and runs out the back door. So that's four years on the first time. His case that he'd had one before it, he had a positive before that was the first one. It was his first one. Yeah. Well, he obviously didn't test positive

even then because he didn't test at all. But then he admitted that he was, in his words, even then because he didn't test at all. But then he admitted that he was, in his words, he was taking some sort of, it wasn't a steroid. I think it was a diuretic, he was saying, because he had fluid buildup or something. It didn't make any sense to me. But like Aldo, he avoided taking a drug test in Brazil, correct?

I mean, I don't know if that's the case, that he avoided it. I mean, there was, you know, obviously, I think Nevada played, you know, publicly disclosed what was played out. They sent a collector here from the United States down there, showed up at the gym. They disputed whether or not they should take it. Yeah, who knows what happened. One thing, you know, I don't know exactly how everything went down there. One thing I can say is under our program, and that's one of the reasons we went to USADA, USADA needs to go to another country to do a collection like that. They reach out to the national authority of that country so that when somebody shows up on behalf of USADA or with USADA at a gym, you're not going to get an instance or, you know or a reasoning that, hey, we didn't know who this person was. They'll be credentialed.

Everyone will know who they are. They'll be a representative from that nation there. I think they tested Aldo's sample anyway, if I'm correct, and he tested negative. Is that true? They did. Ultimately, I think it was the next day that he provided a sample, and that did test negative. But there was some issues about the day before a sample wasn't provided because— Because he went 24 hours, and he could have—whatever he had could have cleaned out of his system.

Sure. Some things can. That is—you know, that would be a concern, sure. So they can test for human growth hormone now, too, which was something that they couldn't test for for a long time? They couldn't, true. And there's also another test that came out for it where they can run back a couple weeks. It used to be with a blood test you would have had to detect it within maybe 24 hours of its use. There's now an isoform test, which isn't necessarily for the drug itself, but kind

of like with the biological passport, if you take growth hormone, it will affect certain markers in you that will last over time, even if the drug has cleared your system. So it gives anti-doping that ability to reach back a couple of weeks and determine if it was used. So again, an evolving tool that, you know, maybe some organization says, oh, there's a new test, two weeks, we can go back. All those frozen samples, let's go back and retest them and see that maybe it wasn't within 24 hours that an athlete used, but two weeks. So that factor, I think, is always, you know, hanging out there for somebody who chooses to use a substance as a band. Well, Jeff, thank you very much for coming on here and

taking the time to explain all this stuff and thank you very much for this incredibly comprehensive effort to clean up the sport i think it's awesome and i think what you're doing is just it's very it's very it's very intriguing it's inspiring and i think ultimately it's great for the sport appreciate it yeah anything else to say no I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for the platform. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you at an event soon. Absolutely. My pleasure. Jeff Nowitzki, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back tomorrow with Jeff Ross and we did it.