Last August, Junior dos Santos joined the list of MMA fighters who had failed USADA testing due to tainted supplements. Being innocent and still being branded as a cheat can have a huge effect on an MMA fighters legacy. Junior dos Santos tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic that is banned by the agency because it can be used as a masking agent. Due to this test failure, dos Santos’ scheduled fight with Francis Ngannou at UFC 215 was pulled. In April, Junior dos Santos was cleared by USADA after it was found that he had taken a contaminated substance sold by unnamed Brazilian pharmacies.
Even after he was vindicated by USADA dos Santos admits that he is still scared of USADA and the repercussions that may follow a USADA test.
In an interview with MMA Fighting, Junior dos Santos spoke about his USADA case.
“I spent nine months out and it was horrible. The problem is that you’re found guilty before anything else,” dos Santos told MMA Fighting in a recent interview. “You’re found guilty until proven innocent. That only happens with USADA. The law says you’re innocent until proven guilty [laughs].
“It’s a pretty bad situation and I don’t wish anyone to go through it, especially those who have done nothing. It affected me a lot, but I consider myself a strong person, both mentally and physically. I’m happy that it’s in the past and, God willing, won’t happen again.
“I have a fight now, and every time [USADA] comes, I try to show them everything I’m taking,” he continued. “I show everything, because I’m kind of afraid. I don’t know. It happened once when I did nothing. God forbid it happens again, so I get scared. That bothers me a lot.”
The former UFC heavyweight champion appreciates that USADA is trying to make the sport clean and make it safer for fighters, but he believes that improvements should be made regarding their policies and the way that they announce failed tests.
“I think there’s room for improvement with USADA,” dos Santos said. “No one understands anti-doping better than them, so they should improve [their policies] and not take the athlete out of a fight. Fighters don’t have a match every week, like in soccer, for example. We don’t. We won’t fight for another three or four months.
“I think that USADA should try to prove someone’s guilt before pulling him out of a fight,” he continued. “If you’re caught with steroids or whatever, that’s your problem. If it’s clearly not cross contamination or something like that, if you’re caught with a huge amount of steroids in your body, OK, take him out of the fight because it’s kind of clear that he has a degree of fault.
“Now, if somehow it looks like contamination, they shouldn’t remove you from a fight. They should let you fight and investigate. If a fighter is proven guilty, give him a worse penalty, a fine, revert the result in case of a win.”
July 1st marked the three year anniversary of USADA’s inclusion in the UFC, and it has helped the UFC massively in its journey to clean up the sport, but the way in which fighters are ridiculed before all possibilities have been checked can affect fighters careers massively.
Junior dos Santos is scheduled to fight Blagoy Ivanov on July 14th in Boise, Idaho.
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