Vitor Belfort Refuses To Answer UFC 152 Questions, Scraps MMA Hour Appearance
The MMA world may have let out a collective sigh of relief when it was thought that the long and drawn-out saga of Vitor Belfort and his controversial use of testosterone-replacement therapy (TRT) when it was outlawed by the NAC and UFC in early 2014, but in actuality, it appears that was far from the case.
A tell-all article recently surfaced from Deadspin’s Josh Gross detailing a highly questionable set of events leading up to Belfort’s failed UFC 152 title fight against former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, where ‘The Phenom’ reportedly failed a drug test for elevated levels of testosterone but was still allowed to fight by the promotion after ‘Bones’ had already wrecked the prior month’s pay-per-view (PPV) by refusing to fight fellow TRT user Chael Sonnen.
A concerning email was also allegedly (and erroneously) sent to members of the MMA media about the failure, and UFC executive Lawrence ‘Ike’ Epstein soon sent one of his own imploring them to destroy any potentially damaging evidence with a veiled threat that they could be implicated legally if they did not.
In an era where MMA fighters are under extreme heat and testing because of PEDs, the UFC has remained mum on the subject ever since, and Belfort has done exactly the same heading into his November 7 trilogy bout with the legendary Dan Henderson. Belfort was set to appear on today’s (Mon., October 26, 2015) edition of The MMA hour with Ariel Helwani, but apparently his team had some last-minute provisions for the interview that included not talking about the UFC 152 fiasco whatsoever. When Helwani refused to do that, Belfort simply refused to appear on the show.
Check out Helwani’s take on the circumstances below.
Mr. @vitorbelfort will not be on the show today after all. His rep asked me about an 1 ago to not ask certain qs. I said I couldn’t do that…
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2015
… so they pulled him from the show. Disappointing, considering he was booked on Wednesday and they give this ultimatum now. Ah well. …
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2015
Draw your own conclusions from that. Anyhow, still a great show planned for today. Looking forward to going live in an hour. #themmahour
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2015
