The Doggy Bag: Overtime at the Lab Edition

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Explain to me the purpose of "pre-fight" drug testing if catching a fighter breaking the rules beforehand doesn't mean anything. I can almost understand cocaine and marijuana not being a big deal beforehand (though top fighters training while using recreational drugs is still an issue to me), but why bother with this if someone like Silva tests positive for two steroids and still gets to go out, fight and win? Catching cheaters should be a positive for MMA, but not even that can be done correctly. -- Davin from St. Catherine's

Greg Savage, executive editor: You've left me without a whole lot to add here. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of the email and wonder myself why even waste everyone’s time and money if “catching” cheaters really doesn’t mean anything other than commissions collecting their fines and fighters getting suspended after the fact.

Most commissions’ mission statements read something along the lines of “to protect the safety and welfare of the fighters,” and then this kind of chicanery ends up being commonplace in our sport. There is no way to make sense of how PEDs have been handled in MMA and it is going to be an issue that continues to plague the sport until something is substantive is done.

I have been pretty clear that I feel it is in the UFC’s best interest to institute an out-of-competition testing program -- something they were rumored to be setting up until scrapping it last month -- but ultimately it falls upon the state athletic commissions to actually live up to their stated goals of protecting these athletes.

In lieu of these hodgepodge commissions with their own rules and regulations, I would like to see a federal commission set up to set standards that every individual state commission would have to follow or forfeit the right to regulate combat sports.

It isn’t just pre- and post-fight drug testing that needs to be standardized but pre-fight medicals, suspensions and fines. Unbelievably, some states still do not require a full slate of pre-fight medical exams, including eye exams. These state agencies, for the most part, have not shown they are willing to work together in a reasonable manner and it is time for the sport to get the standardized regulation that it deserves.

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