In the last two sections of what may very well be the most comprehensive interview with Keith Kizer, we spoke about the perception of prolific steroid usage in MMA and other pro sports. Read on.
There’s a perception out there, I’m not sure how many people believe this, and of course there is no way of knowing…but some people feel that the majority of fighters or a large percentage of fighters are either cycling steroids or using large amounts of substances to get up to these artificially high levels of testosterone and then cycling down before they actually get tested.
Well, we will never know what the percentage is. It could be large. It could be small. It could be somewhere in between. I mean, that’s why you have to have drug testing and you have to have drug education. You have to have a vigilant jurisdiction trying to find different ways to deter them from using in the first place. The best case for everybody, including the athletes, is nobody uses them and the tests all come back negative because they’re true negatives. That is the most important thing, is to try to do what you can.
I think a lot of athletes, not that it’s an excuse, but a reason that they took steroids in the past was that was the only way they thought they could compete. Their opponent is taking them so they need to take them not to get an unfair advantage, but to get to a level playing field. Well now with the enforcement efforts and the education efforts by this Commission and other Commissions and other regulatory bodies including the federal government as you saw with the baseball hearings before Congress, athletes can be more assured that their opponents are not using it and if they somehow did use it they are going to get caught and they’re going to get thrown out, and their going to have the win they have over the clean athlete taken away or the gold medal taken away.
Therefore there will be some protection there for the clean athlete so that gives a lot more assurances, a lot more comfort to the clean athletes that they are not going to be unfairly treated because they are being clean and their opponents aren’t. Hopefully because of that there will be more and more and more athletes not using in the first place. Then that will continue to keep having that effect of raising the comfort level.
Again it’s not an excuse to use steroids because you think your opponent is using it, but it is a reason why guys think about doing it and sometimes do it. You see, that’s why it’s so important to get out there and say you know look, we are doing whatever we can to make sure all the athletes are clean when they compete and if somehow they’re not, we are going to catch them and we are going to discipline them very seriously. We are going to take away any benefit they got or any wins they got. In the Olympics, they take away the medals; take away your standing, etc. You know in certain cases, the promoters or the leagues, will throw those people out. It’s happened in baseball. It’s happened now in the UFC. It’s happened in other leagues as well and other companies as well where they just cut you loose, as they should. I think all that stuff will give more comfort to the clean athletes and therefore we will have more and more clean athletes.
What do you think about the perception out there that the majority of fighters are on steroids?
I do not want people to think that everybody just uses steroids. That is not true. It kind of seems like it’s guys that got caught in the past claiming it, you know yeah I got caught, but everybody’s doing it or 90% of the guys are doing it. And then you say, “Oh so you’re doing it?” And they say, “Oh no no. I’m one of the 10%. That’s why I lost my last six fights.” Oh, okay. I am not a believer that a majority of these athletes are doing this. I am more than happy to give the benefit of the doubt to the athletes, especially nowadays. I think now there is a supermajority of these guys that are clean.
That does not mean we are going to be lax in our testing. If I could test everybody, I’d test everybody even if for two years straight everybody passed, everybody was clean. I’d still want to test everybody to keep that going. I think the testing makes people clean. Even if you’re not using, you get tested, you’re clean, gives you pride. [You can say] “Hey, I passed my drug test because I’m clean.” It makes the athlete feel good about himself, but more importantly his or her opponent, if they also passed the drug test, it makes the athlete more comfortable that they have the level playing field and the better man or the better woman is going to win that night. So all of that is part of it, the drug testing, the discipline, the education, the vigilance of the Commission, the vigilance of the promoters, the vigilance of Congress, etc. They all feed on each other and make it a cleaner and cleaner sport. You compare what’s happening now to like I said back in the days of some of these athletes winning gold medals or some winning US Track and Field trials. It’s a different world nowadays. You still can’t let your guard down.
I read a book by Charlie Francis called Speed Trap, he was an Olympic level track coach, and he basically implied that in order to compete at a high level that you needed to be on steroids. That was basically the implication behind the book.
How many athletes got into the Olympics because the USOC drug test came back as a negative or the USADA drug test came back as a negative? I mentioned Marion Jones, of course, and there’s a lot of other athletes that passed. Then in the eastern Europeans back in the 1970’s and 1980’s some of the stuff that came out was just amazing, you know, some of it came out under the fall of the Soviet Union with the people who dealt and got away with it despite the Olympic drug testing standards. Look at Ben Johnson, you know, he got caught in the 1988 Olympics, but in 1987 World Championships , he broke a world record, got a gold medal, and walked away scot-free. Had he never competed again he’d still have those things, but then he got caught in 1984. They ramped him and got a better drug testing and better drug passing. So we try to do the same thing.
To Be Continued…
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