Johny Hendricks’ Camp: GSP’s Drug Test Proposal Full Of Red Flags
Georges St-Pierre seems to set the bench mark for professional athletes; he is a consumate professional with a clean image, a great athlete and carries himself with integrity. He even offered to use VADA (voluntary anti-doping agency) testing in the lead up to his clash with Johny Hendricks, and encouraged Bigg Rigg to do the same. Something that Hendricks was not too
keen on, and as more emerges abouth the situation; the more I’m starting to agree with Hendricks.
Check out what Hendricks’ manager, Ted Ehrhardt, had to say about the situation:
“GSP asked if we would drug test. He didn’t say VADA or anything else at first, he just asked for drug testing and Johny said, ‘Of course I’ll drug test.’ Then he said VADA, and then it came to us that VADA is giving the testing to him for free.’
“Somehow he (St-Pierre) has a relationship with VADA. I don’t know to what degree, but that made us a little nervous and since we don’t work for GSP, we work for the UFC, and we’re fighting in Nevada, so they’re the commission, we talked to both of them,” Ehrhardt said. “We did a conference call with GSP’s manager and trainer, the Nevada commission, UFC representative and myself, and we talked about him wanting us to do VADA.”
Alarm bells ring straight away when you consider that VADA testing will cost a fighter $20,000 U.S, and GSP is not paying a cent for it (according to Ted). Ehrhardt, talking to Bloodyelbow.com, then talked about the possibility of using the WADA (world anti-doping agency) as an agency that has no affiliation with either fighter.
“A week later, GSP’s attorney asked 15 or 20 questions about how WADA is going to test for this and that, how are they going to move the tests, how are they going to do this, a ton of questions.”
“He wanted to have predetermined times. It’s not random if you know when they’re coming. He had questions about what they test for, and that’s another red flag. Why do you care what they test for, if you’re clean, you’re clean? We didn’t ask one question,” said Ehrhardt. “We were just ready to test WADA, that’s what we wanted to do, and he didn’t want to.”
It does seem suspicous that GSP (allegedly) is willing to take drug tests with an agency that provides him with comps, but won’t take a WADA test because he isn’t sure when or what they will test for. GSP has often been the point of some debate among his former opponents, BJ Penn and Nick Diaz are among many fighters who suspect that GSP’s image is a facade.
I can’t help but think that this story may go a little deeper than has so far been disclosed, and I don’t like the idea of that. GSP has long been a poster boy for the UFC, if it was discovered that he has been juicing for all this time, it would tarnish his legitimacy as a champion and the UFC would probably receive even more dickenzien criticism about ‘this barbaric sport’.
Then again it could be a case of sore losers that could surely only be beaten by a roid raging gorilla, who knows?
