Dana White Says Brock Lesnar Was Tested By USADA Before Mark Hunt Fight
Dana White has revealed that Brock Lesnar was tested for performance-enhancing drugs on multiple occasions leading up to his matchup with Mark Hunt.
UFC 200 saw the return of Lesnar to MMA after being away from the sport for just shy of five years. The former heavyweight champion would take on Hunt in his return bout and initially got the best of ‘The Super Samoan’ beating him via unanimous decision.
However, following on from the bout it was revealed the result would be changed to a no-contest due to the fact Lesnar had tested both pre-fight and post-fight for the banned substance clomiphene. People were lead to believe that this was due to Lesnar not being under regular USADA testing which allowed him a ‘free pass’ on his return which enabled him to use such banned substances.
The UFC president has now claimed that Lesnar was regularly tested in the build-up to this matchup, in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports.
“USADA was testing him, he was tested leading into that fight,” White said. “He tested negative four times before he got into that fight”
Following on from this Lesnar wouldn’t compete in the UFC again.
Dana White And USADA’s Need To Tighten Testing Regulations
What seemed to cause an issue back in 2016 appears to still be giving the UFC problems now, and although the company uses USADA for testing their athletes more needs to be done by both parties to ensure fighters are competing clean.
Bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling gave his thoughts on USADA and the need to implement stronger punishments for those fighters who do get caught testing positive.
“It bothers me, man, it sure does bother me because you should do jail time for doing steroids or EPO or any type of sh*t like that in the UFC, in combat sports, in general. You can literally rearrange someone’s career, their livelihood doing contact sports, man.”
Until testing improves there will unfortunately always be athletes within the sport who try to gain a competitive edge through cheating. What more should USADA do to clamp down even further on these athletes?
Is USADA doing enough to prevent the use of PED’s within the sport?
