With mixed martial arts promotions outside of the United States and Canada, there’s always a question of whether or not the fighters will be drug tested. That goes doubly for Japanese promotions given Pride Fighting Championship’s.history of telling fighters they won’t be tested for steroids. With the new Rizin Fighting Federation promotion being pushed as “the new Pride,” it was inevitable that this would come up, and it finally has. In an interview with Championat (Russian, translation by Karim Zidan of Bloody Elbow), Rizin’s top star, Fedor Emelianenko, was asked if Rizin will be testing, and this is what he said:
We will have strict control. Before and after the fight we are rendering analysis. [Rizin] demanded from us a list of drugs that we have taken during training camp Even in the contract, clauses have been provided in the case of a positive doping test.
Time will tell, but if the Rizin contracts are anything like the Pride contracts, that may not matter.
