Issue 031

November 2007

The use of anabolic steroids seems to be running rampant in MMA these days. With stars like Royce Gracie, Phil Baroni, Pawel Nastula, Vitor Belfort, Sean Sherk and plenty more failing drug tests in the past year, fans could be forgiven for wondering who isn’t ‘on the juice’. 

Commanding enormous media coverage inside the sport, and plenty outside it, the drug issue raises serious questions. Why do they do it? What are the risks? What more can be done to stamp it out and make the sport fair?

As with most things there are plenty of easy answers. They do it because, in the words of Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) director Keith Kizer, “they are cheats and cowards.” They take the risk because they don’t believe they’ll get caught. They don’t understand that steroids will kill them. For many, the only answer is draconian punishments. 

UFC President Dana White has promised a policy of “putting the bitch-slap” on steroid users. But there’s a problem with easy answers. They are rarely right to issues that are more complex than they seem. This article will look at the questions steroid use raises, and argue that the recent near-hysteria over steroids masks two other, potentially more dangerous issues and is, in any case, just one part of a much wider problem.

The Legal Position

In both Britain and the US, steroids are classified as controlled substances and their possession without a valid prescription is illegal. Any fighter using them without proper medical supervision is not only cheating, they are committing a crime. This situation is unlikely to change. 

Libertarians will argue that no drug should be off limits and by bringing steroid use out in the open it can be properly monitored and regulated to minimize the health risks. While perfectly logical, that ignores the political and legal realities of the situation. Few politicians are likely to attach their name to legalising what are, in the eyes of the media and most fans, dangerous drugs almost exclusively used by cheating athletes. 

The governing bodies of every major sport in the world, from the Olympics downwards, have declared certain drugs as off limits because of their performance enhancing nature. As MMA strives to be a legitimate, respected sport, it obviously needs to tackle steroid use in the same way as everyone else. For that reason alone, it is right and proper that MMA promotions and regulating bodies do all they can to discourage and punish drug use. The recent slew of positive tests are a necessary part of that. But even with the stigma of being branded a drugs cheat, facing fines, suspensions and the stripping of titles fighters still seem to be taking steroids with little regard for the potential consequences.

Why do they do it?

Surely, this is a very simple issue. Fighters use steroids for a competitive advantage over opponents. Certainly, the performance enhancing benefits of some steroids (greater strength and or endurance, as well as faster recovery time from heavy training or injuries) are obvious. But there can be other reasons too. Genetically pre-disposed to a somewhat melted looking physique, Tim Sylvia’s took the steroid stanozolol in 2003 to improve his cosmetic appearance. His reasoning? A champion should look like one. When caught, he admitted the offence and took his punishment (a hefty fine, a suspension and the loss of his UFC heavyweight title) quietly.

Explaining his own steroid use at UFC 73 in July, Hermes Franca cited an ankle injury, which without the help of the steroid drostanalone, would have forced him to pull out of his lightweight title fight with Sean Sherk. Missing the biggest fight of his life wasn’t an option and, Franca explained, he needed the money from his fight purse to feed his family. Oddly, drostanalone is more commonly used to combat water retention, aiding weight cutting, and Franca’s ban means he won’t be earning any money from fighting in the US, or any promotion sanctioned by US-based athletic commissions, for a year. 

Stephan Bonnar also used a banned steroid to heal an injury and was caught out in August of 2006. Choosing veterinary steroid boldenone may not have been the wisest move for the TUF reality show star. Intended for horses (and hard to argue use was accidental or unknowing) it stays in the system much longer than most steroids (five months is not unusual). But given their legitimately therapeutic uses, it’s hardly surprising fighters sometimes turn to steroids to deal with untimely injuries and the daily brutality of training for a fight.

Steroids are fairly easily acquired and, given the current testing regimes, it shouldn’t be too difficult to pass drug tests, even without being ‘clean’. Careful cycling on and off, knowing how long the drug stays in their system and correlating that with when a fighter knows they may be tested is a simple matter of maths and research. Without random testing all year round, it’s likely that plenty of fighters are using steroids and getting away with it. No drug testing system is totally effective anyway and by offering contrition, fighters can get away with a few months suspension and a comparatively paltry fine. Royce Gracie’s $2,500 fine for his positive nandrolone test in June apparently ‘wasn’t worth’ contesting because it would cost more than that to hire a lawyer. 

The inconsistencies in punishments (ranging from three months to a year), the relatively small fines actually handed down (for high earning stars at least) and the fact at least one athletic commission (Texas) doesn’t bother to test all mean fighters can still play the existing system and get away with it.

Without a genuinely worldwide governing body, even if a fighter is suspended by an athletic commission, there will always be places for them to fight. Thanks to a pre-fight drug test (ordered because he failed a test in 2004) Kimo Leopoldo was yanked from his WFA pay-per-view main event fight with Bas Rutten in July 2006. Two months later, Kimo fought in London for Cage Rage. In December 2006, the NSAC suspended Vitor Belfort for nine months over his steroid use at Pride’s debut US show two months earlier. In April 2007, Belfort also fought for Cage Rage. Cage Rage were not bound by the rules of the US-based commissions, but their forgiving attitude hardly helps enforce an anti-steroid message for the sport as a whole.

While the UFC have pursued and embraced regulation and the drug testing that almost always comes with it since the late 1990s, others have been less interested. The IFL (a promotion which doesn’t always run in regulated states) responded to the recent steroid scandals by announcing they would begin their own testing programme in 2008. 

BodogFight, having held seasons of their TV show in Russia and Costa Rica also seem to have little in the way of an effective drug policy. With no governing body in Britain, fighters are apparently free to use whatever they want unless the promotion takes it upon themselves to conduct testing. 

And there’s always Japan. With their man caught with one steroid and three banned stimulants in his system at Pride’s US debut last October, Pawel Nastula’s defence team claimed his contract with Pride actually allowed the use of performance enhancing drugs. While technically true, this wasn’t just an issue with one promotion. Such drug testing is simply not a part of Japanese MMA. With no governmental regulation at all, promotions like Pride, K-1 Hero’s, Pancrase and Shooto are left to their own devices, their fighters potentially able to take whatever they please.

Drugs Are Bad

Announcing to leading website MMA Weekly in July that “people are unfortunately uneducated that drugs will kill you”, California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) boss Armando Garcia may as well have added South Park school counsellor Mr Mackey’s trademark ‘Drugs are bad, m’kay’. 

Unfortunately, Garcia’s blanket condemnation of substances which (in the case of steroids) have genuine therapeutic uses, leaves his comments looking like a holdover from the 1980s and Ronald Reagan’s failed ‘Just Say No’ campaign. As a government official, his stance is fairly standard but by overstating the case to such a degree, his overall message is greatly undermined. Anabolic steroids were developed and are used for many legitimate medical purposes, including the treatment of conditions like AIDS and cancer. 

Reckless and sustained usage for non-medical purposes certainly have negative, and even potentially fatal effects, but more than forty years after anabolic steroids became part of the sporting scene few deaths can be directly attributed to them, and them alone. Other contributing factors, such as the use of ‘street drugs’ (an issue beyond the remit of this article), the physical punishment endured by years of training and competing and genetic and lifestyle factors all need to be considered. The ‘lost generation’ of over 40 pro wrestlers from the 1980s onwards who have died prematurely with some depressingly similar autopsies (the enlarged hearts which steroid use can cause being the most obvious one) should be a sobering reminder to everyone what damage prolonged and heavy steroid abuse can help to inflict on the human body. But even then, nobody really knows whether the deaths are directly attributable to steroids.

Safety First

One argument that comes up time and again is that stopping fighters from taking steroids is for their own long-term health. While this is a laudable aim it risks not only being ineffective (how many people in their 20s really think about what their health will be like two decades down the line?) but potentially hypocritical. 

Whenever MMA is accused of being ‘barbaric’ or ‘ultra-violent’, fans, fighters and everyone involved circle the wagons around with the usual ‘this is a safe sport’ arguments:

·      There has never been a death in a properly regulated event.

·      The single death was back in March 1998 in the Ukraine when Douglas Dedge, a man with a pre-existing brain injury, collapsed and died after losing his fight.

·      [Insert sport here – usually boxing or motor racing] is more dangerous because more people die.

·      MMA fighters take fewer punches than boxers and so logically face less of a risk of pugilisitica dementia (punch-drunk syndrome) in later life.

These are all good, valid arguments but relying so much on them is bound to cause problems one day. MMA is not a ‘safe sport’. It is a sport that involves punching, kicking or kneeing someone else in the head. These are simply not ‘safe’ activities. 

The Level Playing Field: A Myth

Aside from the health risks, the other anti-steroid argument most often used is that it’s cheating. 

The argument goes a little something like this: Without steroids, the sport is a simple, even playing field. It’s man vs. man and, dodgy decisions and fluke injuries aside, the better man should win. By taking steroids a fighter obviously skews this balance and that’s why the use of these drugs should be stamped out.

Welcome to a Utopian dream world that bears no resemblance to how things really are. With some fighters earning in excess of $1 million a fight (and their peers earning a few thousand) there is no level playing field when it comes to the kind of training facilities they can afford. With sponsorship allowing some fighters to train all day while others have to work day jobs and fit their training around it, there is no level playing field. With some fighters able to train at altitude when their opponents can’t, there is no level playing field. 

With some fighters able to afford enormous quantities of legal supplements that mimic the performance enhancing gains of steroids anyway, while others having to make do with far less or none, there is no level playing field. Adding steroid use to this list merely adds another imbalance to an already unbalanced playing field. It certainly doesn’t help, but it’s far from the only culprit. Making MMA ‘fair’, ‘healthy’ and ‘safe’ goes far beyond stopping the use of things like nandrolone, stanozolol and boldenone.

All opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and are not necessarily reflected by Fighters Only.