Former PRIDE star and two-time UFC tournament champion Mark Kerr recently opened up about his heavy PED use during his active fighting career.
In a new clip released by MMA documentary filmmaker Bobby Razak, which you can watch above, the star of the infamous “Smashing Machine” documentary revealed that he was taking a lot of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his MMA career.
“Up to the age of 27, I didn’t touch any PED’s at all. I went through all my Olympics, all my NCAA stuff taking no chemicals whatsoever. I think part of it was me having a little bit of fear from not knowing what was going to happen or take place [in MMA],” said Kerr. “I went ahead and experimented with anabolics and androgenics.”
Kerr continued, “On my first fight in Brazil, I was on a small dose of anabolics. When I went into the UFC, I thought of stepping it up in another gear. I was probably 275 lbs with 5% body fat. I could bench press a small car and can squat a small house. It was totally overkill.”
Kerr also spoke about the early days of PRIDE, a promotion notorious for being leanient when it comes to PED use.
“I think PRIDE just wanted the finished product. They never particularly cared how it got there,” Kerr explained. “They wanted you to look good. They wanted you to perform well, but they didn’t particularly care if you ended up taking X, Y, or Z to get in the ring. They never questioned whether my blood pressure was too high. They never questioned whether my weight was too high or too low. They just wanted the end product. That’s it.”
