‘Rampage’ Jackson and Frank Mir discuss rampant steroid use in PRIDE, claims ‘everybody was doing meth’
MMA icons and former UFC champions Frank Mir and Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson opened up about the rampant steroid use in beloved Japanese fight promotion PRIDE FC.
Joined by Tito Ortiz on The HJR Experiment, Jackson and Mir looked back on their early days in mixed martial arts, specifically their time competing under the PRIDE banner where steroid testing was non-existent.
“I loved fighting in Japan, I liked what they stood for,” Jackson said. “They was more about entertainment in Japan and UFC, it was more always about who’s the best. In Japan they didn’t care about who’s the best. Who was the most exciting? That was my style, I liked exciting people.
“A lot of people, they think the reason PRIDE fighters didn’t do well when they came to the states was because steroids,” Jackson continued. “Because in Japan, they didn’t test for steroids. I remember in the rules meeting, they’d give you a sheet of paper — ‘Here’s the rules.’ First thing on the paper was, ‘We do not test for anabolic steroids.’ And I’d never heard of anabolic steroids, and I was like, ‘What is this anabolical steroid?’ And a couple of fighters looked at me [laughing].”
‘Rampage’ Jackson Comments on Mir’s Claim That ‘Everybody’ in PRIDE Was Doing Meth
Frank Mir chimed in, claiming that there were rumors of fighters regularly taking meth before stepping inside the ring.
“The rumor that we always heard over here was that everybody over there was doing meth,” Frank Mir said. “Because you’d see Wanderlei [Silva] throw 500 punches per round, you’d see guys just brawling and going nuts.”
PRIDE may have been more than lenient when it came to steroid use, but the promotion did regularly test for recreational drugs making a pandemic of meth usage highly unlikely.
“Probably EPO,” Jackson replied. “I think they were probably doing EPO. It was rumored that ‘Ninja’ and ‘Shogun’ [Murilo and Mauricio Rua] was on EPO because they was going crazy and never got tired. Our rounds were 10 minutes, the first round was 10 minutes. So, I was in great shape, but I wouldn’t go crazy.
“They test for, like, weed and like, cocaine and whatever,” Jackson added. “They test for that stuff, but they didn’t test for steroids.”
