In this episode, Joe and Jeff discuss the case of UFC fighter Jon The Dragon Jones. Jones failed a doping test in 2017 and was banned for 15 months by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for doping violations related to a substance called DHCMT (Dihydrochloromethyltestosterone) and oral terinabol (DHCMT) that was found in his system. The problem was, it wasn t clear where the substance was coming from or what it was doing to his body. Jeff and Joe discuss this and other doping cases involving athletes and their use of performance enhancing drugs in order to enhance their performance. They also discuss Jon s appeal of the 15-month suspension, and why it may not have been as severe as it was. Also, they discuss the recent ruling by an independent arbitrator in the Jon Jones case, and the implications for the future of doping in the UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts. Thanks for listening and share this episode with your fellow sports fans everywhere! -Jeff and Joe Subscribe to our new podcast, to stay up to date with the latest sports news and discuss the latest in sports and everything else going on in the world of sports and pop culture! Subscribe, share, and spread the word to your friends about what's going on around the sports world! Thank you for listening to SportsShark Tank! and Good Luck! -Jon Jones. -Joe and Jeff and Cheers, Cheers! -AJ & Cheers -Your continued support is much appreciated and much appreciated! -Merry Christmas! -Your support is so much appreciated, Joe, Joe & Jeff, Thank you, Joe - Your support is greatly appreciated and appreciated! Cheers - Your continued support will be much appreciated. -Amenities are so appreciated and Much More! -JOSH COHOSTED by: Joe, Jeff, Sr., Sr. . -JACOB ( ) . . . JUICY P. ( ) -JORDY ( ) . .JOSH ( ) & KEVIN ( ) ( ) , JOSH MILLER ( ) ... (JOSCO ( ) AND KELLY ( ] ) ( ) !! (CHEER (JOSH) (AUGMENTED, JOSCO) & JOSH ( ] )
00:00:15.000Not been the easiest week in my life or my career is last week, but hanging in there.
00:00:20.000To make this stand-alone so that people don't have to go figuring this out on their own, and I'm sure many, many fans that are tuning in already know the gist of the details, let's lay this out from the beginning.
00:00:36.000Yeah, so that was July of 2017. He tested positive for approximately 20, anywhere from 20 to 60 picograms of a long-term metabolite known as the M3 metabolite of a substance called dihydrochloromethyltestosterone, DHCMT, also known as oral terinabol.
00:01:06.000So John went through a full arbitration hearing, was never able to determine where it came from, tested all the supplements he was using, went through many interviews with USADA, had a full-on arbitration hearing.
00:01:21.000The source was never determined where it came from.
00:01:24.000Why was his suspension so low or so short if it wasn't determined?
00:01:30.000There's many factors that go into what that suspension was.
00:01:33.000I would argue in the totality of the evidence that was presented in that arbitration that it wasn't a short suspension because really one key thing came out of that arbitration.
00:01:45.000John went to arbitration before an individual by the name of Richard McLaren.
00:01:50.000Richard McLaren has an arbitration group up in Canada, and McLaren is probably worldwide known as one of the most credible guys in anti-doping.
00:01:59.000I know you had the Icarus producer-director on.
00:02:03.000The McLaren report was the report that came from all that.
00:02:07.000He basically investigated the Russian state being involved in doping in the Sochi games and put out actually a series of reports on it detailing that up to 1,000 Russian athletes We're breaking the rules, and the Russian laboratory was helping them get around it.
00:02:34.000His determination and I'll read you kind of what he said.
00:02:37.000He said, I find that all evidence available to me leads me to conclude that the violation was not intended nor could it have enhanced the athlete's performance.
00:02:54.000I mean, there's no argument that it was in his system, but he found the evidence to show non-intentional use.
00:02:59.000And then he went further, saying that based on the numbers of what he saw in the evidence, there was not even a performance-enhancing benefit afforded to John for having this long-term metabolite in his system.
00:03:10.000And I think that's significant when you talk about, hey, 15 months, that's kind of light being that this is the second time through.
00:03:17.000I would argue that That if there was an argument, that maybe it's on the higher end.
00:03:22.000And certainly, you know, we'll talk about the California Commission.
00:03:25.000Andy Foster took that position in John's recent California hearing.
00:03:30.000He was a little bit critical of USADA. He thought, you know, he's intimately familiar with his evidence, both in the previous case and this occurrence, and he also saw that there was no evidence that an independent arbitrator, you know, made this statement and decision of John intentionally cheating.
00:03:48.000So if anything, I'd say that potentially there could be an argument that it was on the higher end versus the lower end.
00:03:55.000Because of the fact that it was an unintentional ingestion.
00:04:01.000What has John said, how he got this into his system?
00:04:04.000Yeah, well look, you know, it's detailed in the arbitration hearing at all.
00:04:08.000John fully admits that, you know, some of the lifestyle decisions he was making, you know, the partying and things, you know, probably did not lead to making smart decisions and making smart choices in terms of what was being ingested in the body.
00:04:23.000But certainly his testimony was under oath that I have never intentionally cheated and did not intentionally put this substance in my body.
00:04:31.000And not only this case, but as we talk about the subsequent case here, I think you'll see that based on the numbers coming out of his tests and based on some studies that have been done on some of these substances, it would tend to support that.
00:04:45.000Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't John test negative, then test positive for extremely low numbers?
00:04:52.000This is the initial test, before we get into the most recent failed test.
00:04:56.000Test negative, then test positive very shortly after with a very small trace amount.
00:05:03.000So we had two negative tests on July 7th and July 8th, I believe, of 2017. And then weigh-in day, I think it was July 28th, he was positive for a very low level of the M3 metabolite.
00:05:19.000Again, going back to Icarus, remember the doctor?
00:05:22.000I mean, he's the main character in that, Rechenkov.
00:05:24.000In 2011, he put out a study on oral turinibol.
00:05:30.000He actually, my understanding, has dosed himself And then studied the excretion of his urine and what was coming out of it over the weeks and months after and determined that there were multiple, maybe up to 50 metabolites that once this DHCMT was ingested into the body, the body converted into other substances and these metabolites stayed around.
00:05:54.000He identified some short-term metabolites.
00:05:58.000Some medium-term metabolites and some long-term metabolites, specifically the M3 that John's tested positive for.
00:06:04.000So these long-term metabolites would indicate that it was taken a long time ago?
00:06:09.000They would stay around for the longest.
00:06:11.000Why was he testing negative and then testing positive for these extremely low numbers?
00:06:16.000That's a good question, and that's basically the question and point.
00:06:19.000But what was not occurring and what has never occurred in any of John's samples is any presence of the short and medium-term metabolites.
00:06:30.000And if you look at Rechenkov's study, he identifies a couple of these medium-term metabolites, Roman numeral I and Roman numeral II.
00:06:40.000And he says these metabolites, based on his study, will stay in the body at least 22 days.
00:06:47.000Well, let's look back to the July 7th and 8th positive tests.
00:06:51.000He's negative on July 7th and 8th for everything, for the parent compound, for the short-term, medium-term metabolites, and the long-term metabolites.
00:07:00.000Go 21 days later, so within that 22-day window, which his study shows the short- and medium-term metabolites would still be showing up, and there's no presence whatsoever of the short- or medium-term metabolites.
00:07:14.000Now, again, we'll get into this a little bit more, but I think the science, what it's showing, is a pulsing effect for this long-term metabolite, meaning once you ingest, whether intentionally or non-intentionally, oral tyrinobol into the body, the body breaks it down, produces oral tyrinobol into the body, the body breaks it down, produces short-term and medium-term, which is visible for a short and medium amount of and then this M3, which is produced for a long period of time.
00:07:42.000I think what the issue appears to be, and we'll get into this, the UFC program is not the only program that's seen this.
00:07:49.000There's another professional sports league that has seen it very frequently.
00:07:53.000USADA has also seen this on the Olympic side.
00:07:56.000But we're seeing this strange action with the long-term M3 metabolite.
00:08:02.000It may be hiding in the fat tissues surrounding organs and maybe have a pulsing effect where it's released at certain times and other times you can't detect it.
00:08:13.000And this is not the actual substance itself, but it's a metabolite.
00:08:17.000Which indicates a reaction to this substance?
00:08:19.000It indicates the body breaking down the parent compound, the oral torinobol, and turning it into these other things which are stored in the body.
00:08:41.000I think Rechenkov's study says, you know, maybe a week.
00:08:43.000So it's not around for very long, and that's why he conducted the study.
00:08:48.000Ironically enough, and I was going to go watch Icarus here last night, and I've had too much going on the last week to kind of refresh my mind, but apparently, this was part of his protocol for Russian athletes.
00:09:01.000He knew a coach that was still giving the oral torrental ball to Russian athletes, and he had a falling out with the coach.
00:09:07.000So he goes off on the side and studies, hey...
00:09:11.000The parent compound is going to get in and out of the body pretty quick.
00:09:14.000It's going to be difficult to detect that.
00:09:16.000Let's try to figure out what stays around and leaves markers in the body for a long time.
00:09:20.000And so he developed these short and long-term metabolite tests and was able to catch some of this coach's athletes for using the oral turinable.
00:10:36.000You know, the theory the first time through was something had to have entered his system between July 7th and July 8th, those negatives, and this low picogram reading on July 28th.
00:10:47.000Over this last year, there's been a lot of study into this long-term metabolite.
00:10:51.000As I mentioned, this isn't just a UFC issue.
00:10:53.000There's another major professional sports league that, for the time being, wants to keep their testing confidential, but they've shared that information with scientists, with USADA, with myself.
00:11:04.000They saw it on multiple occasions, this pulsing effect over a year where you'd see...
00:11:37.000Isn't it approximately the same picograms that exist today in 2018 that were there in 2017?
00:11:46.000Generally, if you look, and we can go over these numbers, it fluctuates from single digits, it never gets into triple digits, to mid-double digits.
00:11:55.000So there's some as low as 9 picograms over that time.
00:12:16.000Let's talk about something really small that we know of and how many times you have to break down that small particle to get to a picogram.
00:12:23.000So one grain of salt, and we all know what that looks like, right?
00:12:27.000You put that in front of you, and you split that, and I mentioned this week 50 million.
00:12:46.000And how many picograms did they find in his system?
00:12:49.000So he's gone from, and I'll read through it here.
00:12:52.000So here's, since the initial appearance of the M3 metabolite, here's what John's tests look like in those picogram readings.
00:13:00.000So the first one's collection date was July 28th, 2017. He had a concentration of 80 picograms.
00:13:09.000However, let me caution and I'll read something from an expert.
00:13:13.000When you get down to these picogram levels, the science is somewhat inexact because it's such a small amount.
00:13:21.000So the variable, the plus or minus, you know, can be anywhere from 20, 30, I've seen in some instances 50 or 60. So what this scientist's name is, his name is Larry Bowers.
00:13:32.000He was formerly the USADA science director.
00:13:35.000He's currently retired and independently consults.
00:13:38.000Before that, he ran an Olympic program.
00:13:42.000Olympic Committee accredited laboratory at the University of Indiana.
00:13:45.000The guy's got 20 to 25 years of anti-doping experience.
00:13:50.000Here's what he told me about, you know, when you're analyzing small picogram levels.
00:13:59.000Although the two respective laboratories...
00:14:05.000I would caution against becoming too fixated on the numbers.
00:14:08.000First, the numbers are really estimates of concentration and probably should be considered a range of about plus or minus 20 picograms per ml.
00:14:16.000And he said the December 9th result would be in the range of John's, and we'll get to that, between 60 and 100. Second, while the adjustment of concentration by specific gravity attempts to deal with the variability of urinary excretion rates, it is inexact and adds variability to the estimates.
00:14:33.000Finally, and most importantly, science has no clear understanding of the variance of urinary excretion of drugs at ultra-trace concentrations.
00:14:41.000So basically saying, look, we have a general idea how this works in science, but...
00:14:46.000And I think this instance comes to play.
00:14:49.000Be real careful if you're going to be the guy with the pseudoscience out there saying, wait a second, John jumped from 20 to 60 from September to December, and that means he re-ingested it.
00:15:01.000What he's saying here is slow your roll on that, that it's such a small, incomprehensible level that we don't really know what those variances are going to look like.
00:15:11.000Now, I think if we saw jumps in John from single-digit 8 or 9 picogram to multiple 100-digit picograms, there would be a concern and maybe some re-administration.
00:15:21.000But the experts I'm speaking to, when you're talking variability of 10, 20, 30, 40, it's not that significant at the picogram level.
00:15:29.000What is the window where this long-term metabolite starts to express itself?
00:15:35.000You said there's short-term and there's medium-term.
00:15:45.000And I would encourage those that are home, you know, playing scientists at their computer.
00:15:51.000The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rod Chinkov, writes a report, Detection and Mass Spectrometric Characterization of Novel Long-Term Dehydrochloromethyl Testosterone Metabolites in Human Urine.
00:16:07.000I'm not sure when that long-term metabolite, how long it takes to show up.
00:16:11.000Here's the problem, though, with this substance.
00:16:21.000Oral terinobol, DHCMT, to my understanding, is not approved for use for human consumption anywhere in any country.
00:16:30.000So you can't have clinical trials ethically in the medical world because it's just not legal to give this to human beings.
00:16:39.000So, you know, we're already kind of behind the eight ball here in that As compared to other substances where you can do clinical trials because they're readily available via prescription or whatever, this substance is not.
00:16:52.000The substance was created by the East Germans in the 70s and 80s and was part of their state-sponsored doping program where they were doping their athletes.
00:17:01.000And can you correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what I've read is that this is particularly effective when people are cutting weight.
00:17:08.000Yeah, I mean— Is that true, or is this just more— I think some may be confusing terinabol with oral terinabol, two completely different substances.
00:17:20.000There's very different effects on the body.
00:17:22.000There's very different windows in terms of detection time.
00:18:55.000It's not an easy substance to get a hold of.
00:18:59.000Look, when it's not approved for use anywhere in the world, it's only available on the black market, so you probably have to go to China to get it manufactured.
00:19:09.000You know, a research chemical supply company.
00:19:12.000It's not supposed to be provided to humans.
00:19:14.000Now, I'm certainly not attributing this to you, but there were rumors, this was one discussion, was that one of the possible ways he could have ingested this, and let's be very kind, John likes to party.
00:19:29.000One of the things about partying is people do cocaine.
00:19:31.000One of the things about cocaine is sometimes cocaine is cut with creatine.
00:19:35.000One of the things about creatine is oftentimes you're buying cheap creatine.
00:19:38.000That's one of the things that we've had with Onnit.
00:19:41.000Onnits, our products are all third-party verified.
00:19:44.000But in the initial goings, when we tried different manufacturers, especially for AlphaBrain, we found there were other trace elements that were in AlphaBrain that weren't supposed to be in there.
00:19:54.000And it's because of the vats that they mix these things up with.
00:19:58.000And one of the things that we had heard was that creatine oftentimes is made in the same place where they might be making oral terinobol, they might be making anabol, they might be making a bunch of different things, and trace amounts of this stuff can get into the creatine.
00:20:13.000They use creatine to cut cocaine with.
00:20:25.000I know for a fact, based on my previous career, I worked closely with the DEA. I was with the FDA. I worked cases involving street distribution of recreational drugs, including cocaine.
00:20:36.000I know for a fact that creatine is one of the most common substances that cocaine is cut with because of a similar look, similar color, similar feel.
00:20:46.000So getting back to McLaren's arbitration decision, I mean, this is a publicly available record, so I'm not saying anything new.
00:20:53.000But McLaren addresses at least John's lifestyle around this time.
00:20:58.000And he says the athlete openly admitted to USADA that prior to and for a period of time after the reporting of his second adverse analytical finding on July 28, 2017, the athlete used illicit so-called street drugs, including cocaine.
00:21:12.000Now, for me to sit here and say, hey, that's where it came from, I don't know that.
00:21:37.000If it's cut, if that's where the source of it is, does it make sense that that would show up as a long-term metabolite?
00:21:45.000Doesn't it need a long time in the body to digest, or do we not know enough about the window of time?
00:21:52.000Yeah, I don't know if we know enough about the window of time.
00:21:55.000My theory in looking at it is, even if there's a small amount Of the oral torinobol in that.
00:22:03.000It's going to, for a period of time, show that parent compound at a small picogram amount and the short and mid-term metabolites in the small picogram amount.
00:22:12.000We have never seen those in the history of John's testing.
00:22:18.000So that may be indication that it occurred maybe even prior to what we're talking about here.
00:22:24.000Is it something that could be accentuated in some way by the weight cutting process?
00:22:30.000I absolutely think that could be a factor.
00:22:33.000There are studies, not necessarily with this, but another substance, clomiphene.
00:22:39.000And look, while I'm cautioning people...
00:22:41.000To be careful about comparing different substances.
00:22:44.000The commonality between clomiphene, which there are multiple clinical studies on because it is approved for use to be distributed to humans, and oral terinobol is they're both chlorinated.
00:22:56.000So they both contain a chlorine atom on the molecule.
00:22:59.000And there is a recently published study on clomiphene and its excretion rates.
00:23:07.000Again, for those at home that want to look it up, The study was published in the Endocrine Society publication.
00:23:14.000The name of it is HPT Access Effects in Urinary Detection Following Clomiphene Administration in Males.
00:23:21.000So what they did is they basically, you know, got a group of males, gave them a one-month cycle of clomiphene, you know, I think 25 milligrams a day, and then had them get off.
00:23:35.000And then continue to look at their urine up to 261 days after.
00:23:40.000And what you saw and what you see in this study is that pulsing effect.
00:23:45.000So, you know, I'm looking at some of the study subjects here.
00:23:49.000Subject 1. On day 121, still showed 147 picograms of clomiphene.
00:24:02.000He's below the minimum reporting limit.
00:24:06.000And then day 149, he's back up to 236. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 out of, I think, 12 subjects in that study that showed this pulsing effect of this chlorinated substance coming and going.
00:24:24.000Again, it's different than oral terinobol, but it has that common factor of being chlorinated.
00:24:30.000In this study, they do talk about a fat tissue called the adipose tissue.
00:24:39.000This is fat that surrounds the internal organs.
00:24:42.000It's one of the last things that the body burns when it's starving itself and going to fat.
00:24:48.000But yeah, you look at these extreme weight gains and cuts that the UFC athlete goes through, I don't think you're going to find possibly another human subject anywhere that goes through putting weight on, cutting up.
00:25:03.000Maybe, but I don't think Olympic wrestling matches with an MMA fighter goes through, at least in my experience over these three or four years, talking to those in the Olympic world.
00:25:13.000I think we're at the extreme, and it's something obviously we've talked about before We're trying to curtail, but there's clearly never been a study for anybody who dehydrates and rehydrates themselves to the extent that some of our athletes do.
00:25:29.000There would never be anybody with any ethics that would support a study because some of that dehydration exceeds World Health Organization standards.
00:25:37.000So there's no studies out there on this stuff.
00:25:40.000But clearly, looking from afar, I'd say that it likely has some impact over what's being released by this adipose tissue.
00:25:48.000We should certainly talk about that in the future, about the weight cutting aspect of it.
00:25:52.000But this adipose tissue loss at extreme weight cuts could potentially be the reason why this stuff is excreting itself.
00:26:11.000Well, I mean, someone could try it with something else, but the reason you microdose with endogenous substances is they're already produced in the body.
00:26:20.000So the theory of, okay, I'm going to microdose oral terenobol.
00:26:24.000Well, oral terenobol is still producing these short-term and long-term metabolites.
00:26:29.000In theory, whether you're taking 100 milligrams or 1 milligram of oral terenobol, Those excretion rates of those metabolites are still going to be consistent.
00:26:40.000They're going to be in a much smaller level.
00:26:42.000Is there a way to bypass those excretion rates?
00:26:44.000Is there a way to mask that in some way?
00:26:54.000But just taking it from a common sense approach, it's certainly those that know about microdosing know that you microdose with endogenous substances, things that are already appearing in the body.
00:27:05.000So your body knows what to do with them.
00:27:07.000Knows what to do, and you're fooling, you know, not only are these metabolizing and there's no metabolites of them, but you could also be fooling the biological passport.
00:27:15.000That's the concern, I think, and why people microdose.
00:27:19.000So USAD is looking not only testing for specific substances, but are testosterone to epitestosterone ratios going up?
00:27:27.000They're looking at blood values, how many young red blood cells, how many mature red blood cells.
00:27:32.000So microdosing in those two areas wouldn't set off alarms in the biological passport world.
00:27:38.000I've never heard personally of microdosing of exogenous substances that are not found in the body.
00:27:45.000Microdosing, in my understanding, is done with things that are endogenous.
00:27:48.000And again, for people that are not familiar with this terminology, we're just talking about microdosing, performance-enhancing drugs.
00:27:55.000Because microdosing in today's world is a very common thing with mushrooms and LSD and a lot of other things.
00:28:01.000I mean, I saw a ton of microdosing in the cycling world.
00:28:04.000That was testosterone, EPO, HGH, all those natural occurring in the body.
00:28:11.000And so they don't produce any really red flag metabolites.
00:28:16.000If you do them at very, very small levels, the parent will clear quickly, not produce any metabolites, and will not throw off the biological passport analysis.
00:28:26.000When Victor Conte came out with Clear and all that stuff with Balco, they were fooling people.
00:28:34.000One of the things we've talked about before is that it's a constant race to try to keep up with more advanced cheaters.
00:28:43.000And you know what's interesting in this?
00:28:44.000I mean, if I were to talk to you, and maybe the first time we did talk a couple years ago, it's come a long way from then.
00:28:50.000But clearly, if I were to talk to you 15, 16, 17 years ago, when I got my start in the anti-doping world, I would have told you definitively, the testing is way behind what's being used out there.
00:29:02.000They were able to test to multiple nanogram limits.
00:29:09.000Now they can go down to single-digit picogram.
00:29:12.000There's another professional sports league out there that recently had a one-picogram M3 metabolite case.
00:29:19.000I mean, do the math coming down from four or five nanograms, which used to be the lower limit, now to one picogram.
00:29:27.00010,000, 20,000 times, I am almost under the theory that the pendulum has swung maybe a little bit too far in the other direction.
00:29:37.000And that certainly is part of my job to the UFC. Look, I want to catch every intentional cheater that's out there.
00:29:43.000I want to make sure we have a rock-solid program, use all the latest and greatest techniques to do it, but I also want to keep an eye on it to make sure it's being administrated fairly.
00:29:55.000And when you're getting down to detection of one single-digit picograms, I have a concern that what kind of level of sensitivity are we talking about?
00:30:05.000Are we going to talk about environmental contamination where you walk through a room and somebody has just opened a container of something and there's minuscule powders in the air?
00:30:15.000There are documented cases that some of the regularly prescribed prescription drugs, specifically diuretics, Are getting in water supplies in some areas.
00:30:25.000You know, you get a lot of old people on them that flush their old pills down the toilet.
00:30:30.000There's documented cases of it getting into the water supply and being detectable at that picogram level.
00:30:37.000So you've got to be really, really careful about that.
00:30:40.000And I think, you know, this case exemplifies that USADA and really the World Anti-Doping Agency world and community are aware of that.
00:30:50.000You know, with greater sensitivity and testing, in my opinion, makes greater responsibility to be objective and look fairly at what really we're doing here when we're detecting in that small amount.
00:31:03.000But this test of John's, where he's testing for the same level of picograms today as he was in July of 2017, is it safe to say that this is unprecedented?
00:31:32.000So maybe unprecedented in the UFC program, but what What the United States Anti-Doping Agency did over these last five or six months is they reached out to the science community outside the scope of the UFC. They reached out to other professional sports organizations,
00:31:48.000they reached out to other WADA laboratories, and what they were seeing was multiple instances of this pulsing effect, where over time you would see a reading, the next test it would go away, And the next time you'd see that reading again, maybe back up to or even above what that was.
00:33:08.000Again, when I started off in this 16 or 17 years, the science still wasn't good.
00:33:13.000They were unable to detect anything in the picogram level.
00:33:17.000Again, for reference, very interesting.
00:33:20.000So the WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agencies, accredits laboratories across the world.
00:33:26.000And they have certain standards that those laboratories must meet in order to retain that accreditation and keep that accreditation.
00:33:34.000So they have a technical document called the minimum required performance levels of their laboratory.
00:33:40.000So what they tell the laboratories is you must detect these substances down to this amount.
00:33:46.000If you can't get them down to this amount, then you can't have an accreditation from WADA. So the class of substances that oral terinobol would be in, which would be other anabolic agents, the required minimum level that they must detect to is only two nanograms.
00:34:07.000So, look, WADA even says, as long as you can get to two nanograms, you can retain our accreditation.
00:34:12.000Well, what's happening is in arms race in these laboratories, they're saying, well, two is the minimum standard, but I can get down further.
00:34:19.000And, you know, these are private entities that, you know, are looking for customers.
00:34:25.000So to be able to reach out and say, well, even though WADA tells us two is as low as we need to go, we can go down to one picogram.
00:34:32.000I think in a sense, maybe you need to slow the reins on that a little bit that we're getting too far and too sensitive of a level of detection when it comes to implementing a fair program, because you can't determine where one picogram came from.
00:34:48.000You could be breathing, again, contaminated air, drinking contaminated water.
00:34:52.000It gets real dangerous when you get down that low.
00:34:55.000Now, how does this reflect on past suspensions?
00:34:59.000This is, when you deal with something like, let's bring up Frank Mir, for example.
00:35:03.000Didn't Frank Mir also test for oral turn of ball?
00:35:07.000Okay, I want to get back to Frank Mir, but let's go back to John.
00:35:10.000And this instance and why USADA has come out and said, look, this is not a violation.
00:35:15.000So if you go to the WADA, the World Anti-Doping Code, there's a section 10.7.4.1.
00:35:23.000Our UFC program basically mirrors that.
00:35:27.000And we're bringing that up on the screen there.
00:35:29.000So for purposes of imposing sanctions under 10.7, an anti-doping rule violation will only be considered a second violation if the anti-doping organization can establish the athlete or other person committed the second anti-doping rule violation after the athlete or other person received notice pursuant to Article 7, etc.
00:35:49.000This is what's known as a double jeopardy clause.
00:35:53.000So what it means is a guy tests positive for something, and if he's test positive for the exact same substance that is still in his system a year later, or whatever the amount of time is, you don't include that as a new positive test.
00:36:28.000Is there an issue, though, that this is only one test, that Gregory Wachenko's test is the only study that showed that these medium and short-term metabolites exist?
00:36:39.000It's the only study, but I think then, if there's only one study, you have to go to anecdotal evidence, right?
00:36:45.000Why don't we just do studies on UFC employees?
00:36:48.000Get Sean Shelby to take Oral Terenabol.
00:37:29.000That these, like you see with the pulsing effect, that you see positive effects and negative, or positive results and negative results, that these short-term and medium-term metabolites don't always express themselves, and that what we're considering a long-term metabolite could, in fact, just be a metabolite.
00:37:49.000Yeah, I mean, I guess it's possible, but are you going to sanction an athlete again because, you know, potentially it's possible in the theory of the universe?
00:37:59.000Let me read to you real quick what these experts came out at in terms of re-administration.
00:38:05.000Dr. Daniel Eichner runs the Salt Lake City.
00:38:09.000It's called the Sports Medicine Research Testing Laboratory, or SMIRTLE. They're one of two water-accredited laboratories in the United States, the other one being at UCLA. Again, one of the most respected minds in anti-doping, PhD, chemist.
00:38:25.000His answer in terms of re-administration was this, and you very rarely see scientists at his level talk in absolutes.
00:39:09.000USADA also put out a letter to us in writing, upon careful consideration of the very low concentration of the DHCMT long-term metabolite in Mr. Jones' sample and taking into account the human pharmacokinetic characteristics of this particular long-term anabolic steroid metabolite,
00:39:28.000Based on data to which USADA has access to and in consultation with scientific experts, some of whose opinions are enclosed, USADA has concluded, consistent with prior residual amounts detected in Mr. Jones' sample, that the presence of DHCMT long-term metabolite is consistent with residual amounts from exposure prior to July 28, 2017. Look, I'm not an expert.
00:39:57.000My background's in finance and accounting.
00:40:00.000I traced the money back in the old days, but I know who those experts are out there in the world, and these are them.
00:40:08.000By putting these things in writing, putting their reputations on the line now and forever going forward.
00:40:14.000They're never going to do something like that because the UFC pays USADA to administer our program or because Jon Jones is a popular fighter and they want to see him fight this weekend.
00:40:24.000That's just not the way this world works.
00:41:09.000If I think that there's some way, somehow, that someone is given an unfair advantage and this is somehow being covered up, I would rather not work for them.
00:41:18.000Joe, my last 17 years of my career, everything that I've worked for is to protect the rights of clean athletes and to eradicate cheating from the sport.
00:41:29.000I can't tell you how strongly I feel about that.
00:41:32.000Sport's given me everything in my life.
00:41:35.000My dad was a high school basketball coach.
00:41:37.000It paid for my college and scholarships.
00:41:40.000At least the good characteristics in me, I can all trace directly to sports and sports.
00:41:46.000Entering into the equation the issues of breaking the rules, the issues of the health and safety aspects when you have young, and I talk to many parents whose kids use steroids because they saw the professional athletes doing.
00:41:58.000Entering that into the body when your hormonal levels are already out of control is very, very dangerous, both short and long term.
00:42:06.000I can't tell you how passionate I am about this issue.
00:42:09.000And those out there that are saying that I'm corrupt, that my reputation is out the window, I would never, ever, in a million years...
00:42:49.000Literally, the organizations were looking in the other direction.
00:42:52.000I've often said, look, I don't agree with what they did, but there's a portion of me, and that's why I think a lot of these athletes respected me and shared that information.
00:43:00.000There's a portion of me that said, I don't agree with what you did.
00:43:04.000I'd like to think I wouldn't have made the same decision, but I damn well understand why you did this.
00:43:08.000You're fighting for millions of dollars in contracts.
00:43:12.000You know, your competitors are doing it, and you know your professional sports organization doesn't give a shit because of the weakness of the testing program or total lack thereof.
00:43:22.000So in instances like that, I never came away saying, that guy's an idiot or an asshole for choosing.
00:43:27.000I came away saying, I kind of get why he did it.
00:43:30.000If I was 21 or 22 years old and immature, I may have made the same decision.
00:43:34.000Now, coming to our program here, where you have an organization that cares very much, that spends multi-million dollars a year, this program has done nothing but cost the UFC money.
00:43:46.000It costs us money on how we implement the program.
00:43:48.000It costs us money on canceling fights.
00:43:51.000Anybody who thinks moving this fight to California is at a financial benefit to the UFC is crazy.
00:44:09.000So this was a big step in the right direction of trying to make the sport cleaner because we recognized that, first of all, there was some legal stuff with the testosterone replacement therapy that just threw everything out of whack, where it was essentially It was sanctioned cheating.
00:44:26.000I mean, let's be honest about what that was.
00:44:28.000It was clearly, in my understanding, being manipulated.
00:44:31.000Very easy to manipulate when you get permission to use any prohibited substance like that.
00:44:36.000And we went from that to unbelievably strict protocols, and now what you're seeing is, you're seeing, first of all, we saw a radical change in the physiques of some fighters, where we did have some suspicions, and those suspicions, at least in my eyes, had been confirmed.
00:44:53.000And now we're seeing the good side of this with what, in your estimation, might have been moved over into a position where, okay, now it's getting a little bit ridiculous in terms of what we can detect and what is causing fights to be canceled.
00:45:14.000So, interestingly enough, the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, their next code revision is 2021. And so they regularly put out, hey, what are the issues going forward that we want to address?
00:45:26.000And one of the major issues is potentially establishing thresholds for these low-level substances that keep appearing, DHCMT being one of them.
00:45:40.000And so the idea that WADA is looking at and has a working group of worldwide experts is, hey, if something gets reported back at under 50 picograms, all the evidence is showing, more likely than not, this is from a very low-level contaminant issue.
00:45:56.000We've never seen an issue of a microdosing or an intentional use that's reached that level.
00:46:00.000Why are the labs even reporting at We're good to go.
00:46:24.000Fairness due process in a program is just as important as the strength and comprehensiveness of that program.
00:46:34.000You could have the strongest loophole-free program in the world, but you start implementing things unfairly, you'll lose faith just as much as if you had a bunch of loopholes in the program.
00:47:15.000Well, there was the cocaine kissing defense, which actually won an arbitration, so something similar.
00:47:20.000Somebody tested positive for low-level metabolites of cocaine and basically said, look, hey, whether that was good or not, but...
00:47:29.000The arbitrator bought it and the science shows, hey, that is a possibility.
00:47:33.000The detection levels are so low, if you kiss somebody who had just done cocaine, they're now able to detect at those levels in the person that kissed that person.
00:48:00.000I mean, all our athletes know when they're using a creatine or a protein or whatever, I think most of them are pretty careful right now, but...
00:48:07.000To tell them, hey, you need to read your lip balm and your deodorant.
00:48:11.000I mean, what level are we getting to here in these levels of detection?
00:48:16.000So she, 29-year-old star of Norway's powerhouse squad of skiing, cross-country skiing, tested positive for an anabolic agent listed in the contents of a treatment for sunburn.
00:48:27.000This could be similar in some ways to what Chad Mendes tested positive for, for something for psoriasis, correct?
00:48:39.000He's talked about it pretty openly and he used some sort of a cream and accepted his penalty.
00:48:44.000He wasn't aware that this cream had something, some type of a steroid into it.
00:48:48.000Yeah, I'd seen him publicly state that.
00:48:50.000Now, he chose not to present a defense or go to arbitration, so I haven't seen anything in detail to give you a knowledgeable opinion on that.
00:49:09.000Frank Mir, the same as John Jones his first time through, was sanctioned.
00:49:16.000John didn't get off the first time this showed up in his system.
00:49:19.000He was looking at potential for years, went to arbitration, presented evidence, enacted some other clauses in the policy that reduced his sanction.
00:50:14.000I've never worked for USADA. I was a federal agent for 22 and a half years.
00:50:19.000The latter part of my career got involved with all these PED distribution cases.
00:50:26.0002015, Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White, through a mutual friend, contacted me and said, hey, would you come out and Kind of talk to us.
00:50:33.000We're contemplating maybe putting our own program together.
00:50:36.000We've had some recent high-profile positives.
00:50:39.000So I came out to Vegas, talked with them, and a week later I get a phone call asking if I want to come work for them and kind of implement this new program.
00:50:46.000But I've never been an employee of USADA. Okay, so that's good to know because that's been stated by some public figures that you used to work for USADA and now you work for the UFC. Never worked for USADA. And that you're a shill.
00:51:11.000So I never worked for USADA. I did work very closely with USADA. So USADA, when I first started these series of investigations back in 2002, look, I knew all about how to work a heroin distribution organization, a cocaine distribution organization, methamphetamine organization.
00:51:27.000But when it came to performance-enhancing drugs, there was no class that myself or really any other federal agent or law enforcement agent goes through surrounding distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.
00:51:39.000So I was examining the discarded garbage of Balco every week when they put it out to the curb.
00:51:46.000Began seeing notes, wrappers, all these substances.
00:51:51.000I didn't know the difference between testosterone, epitestosterone, erythropoietin, HGH. I knew nothing.
00:51:58.000So what I did is I figured out who those experts were, who were the people that could very quickly get me up to speed on what I was looking at.
00:52:06.000Dr. Catlin, who ran the UCLA Olympic lab, was one of the first, and he started kind of walking me through this.
00:52:13.000He put me in touch with USADA, and they began educating me as well.
00:52:18.000So over the course of those investigations, I got a lot from them in terms of educating on these substances.
00:52:25.000They were bringing some of their cooperating witnesses to me, and then we'd go off and running on criminal investigations, but never worked for them.
00:52:34.000So, USADA, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they would work would be very compartmentalized.
00:52:40.000Like, they would not specifically communicate with you on all of the details of this?
00:52:47.000I mean, that's the independence aspect.
00:52:49.000I don't, as these deliberations are going on, what they're looking at, I don't know.
00:52:55.000Cooperation, just for me, to be frank, in my eyes, would mean that something was done purposely, illegally, and this person had some knowledge of purposeful, illegal activity, and that they would somehow communicate this to facilitate some sort of catching of someone involved in a criminal act or an act of cheating.
00:53:17.000Yeah, that would make sense to me too.
00:53:19.000So that would be what we're talking about.
00:53:21.000USADA would allow John a shorter suspension if he actively participated in helping them catch people that were cheating.
00:53:42.000But that would mean that John would have to know about cheating.
00:53:46.000If you're saying, like, this is how this drug works, this is how I used it, I mean, that would mean his initial defense would have to be thrown out the window because it wasn't an accident.
00:53:55.000Well, I mean, I don't know about that.
00:53:57.000If he knew something separate from, you know, that he wasn't doing, but someone else, yeah.
00:54:01.000And again, I don't want anybody to reach that conclusion.
00:54:04.000I have no idea what his substantial assistance entailed.
00:54:12.000And look, transparency is important in any program, But, you know, only to a certain level.
00:54:19.000Look, if you were transparent about what everyone's, you know, cooperation or substantial assistance was, and the whole world knew about it, you're never going to get anybody after that coming in and cooperating.
00:54:31.000I saw this definitely on the criminal side with, you know, informants.
00:54:34.000You don't, that's not something that you want to be transparent about or disclose.
00:56:00.000The arbitrator ruled with Josh and said, yep, you know, based on where we are now.
00:56:08.000I think that's a good example of the checks and balances in place here.
00:56:17.000You've got me overseeing the program, taking a look at how these things come out.
00:56:21.000You've got the ability from the athlete to go to McLaren's group and And judge, you know, the set of facts.
00:56:28.000And in that case, McLaren's group said, USADA, I think maybe you overreached a little bit here.
00:56:33.000And I believe Josh and Josh is, you know, basically time served.
00:56:37.000So, you know, you want to see them get it perfect, right every time.
00:56:42.000But, you know, the reality in the real world is that doesn't necessarily happen.
00:56:45.000And that's why you have these checks and balances available.
00:56:48.000Um, Josh Barnett's take on the matter is that they tried to paint him as guilty even though he was not and that he feels like he definitely got a bad deal and that he was labeled as someone who was taking this substance.
00:57:02.000He was suspended for a long period of time while he was going through this and although he was found not guilty, that he feels like not enough emphasis was...
00:57:12.000Put into establishing that he was not guilty and that, you know, he feels like they chased him down over something that he didn't do.
00:57:20.000Yeah, I mean, well, here's what he did do is he used a supplement that if he would have listened to anything that we educate on, that USADA sends out regular reminders our fighters are required on a quarterly basis to go through videos in their whereabouts filing that deals with these issues.
00:57:36.000If he would have followed any of that advice when it came to his supplement choices, he would have never chosen the supplement he used.
00:57:43.000When I heard about that supplement and what was on the label and how it was marketed, I said, okay, well, that's likely the candidate of where it came from.
00:57:52.000So, I mean, the analysis would be, hey, that pool, be careful.
00:57:56.000There are sharks swimming in that pool.
00:58:09.000Now, there also needs to be a differentiation between someone who's intentionally cheating and someone that just makes a naive supplement choice.
00:58:20.000There needs to be a differentiation between that, and there was in that case.
00:58:24.000Josh didn't get the full penalty of what that substance would have rendered.
00:58:30.000But he did have to go through a long period of time where he was unable to fight.
00:58:34.000He did, but again, he had the prohibited substance in his body.
00:58:39.000USADA has to look at, hey, even though you didn't do that on purpose, did that give you a performance-enhancing benefit?
00:58:46.000Did it allow you to recover a little bit better?
00:58:48.000Did it make you a little bit stronger?
00:58:50.000And that's why those strict liability provisions are in there.
00:58:54.000Otherwise, people would just take these prohibited supplements and say, oh, I didn't know it was an accident.
00:59:05.000Now, I also think, again, there needs to be a differentiation between the intentional and non-intentional, and we do have that in our policy.
00:59:13.000There are definitely mitigating factors available in our policy that if you didn't do a thing on purpose, you're not sanctioned.
01:00:01.000Yoel Romero used a natural diuretic product that had a SARM in it.
01:00:06.000In all these cases, not only does the prohibited substance need to show up in what the athlete has said they've used already, but to protect against making sure the athlete isn't purposely spiking it, USADA will go out on their own, on the market, independently procure hopefully the on the market, independently procure hopefully the same lot of product.
01:00:26.000And in the case of Yoel and Tim, they were able to do that, test it completely independently of the athlete, determine what level the prohibited substance is in that.
01:00:35.000Based on the interview with the athlete of how much did you use, when's the last time you used it relative to this test, do the science calculations just to make sure an athlete's not saying, well, I know this creatine has spiked with Osterine, so I'm going to go use Osterine.
01:00:49.000And then I have a built-in excuse when I test positive for Osterine.
01:00:53.000In order to be able to match contaminant levels with what's being excreted in the urine, you would literally have to have a PhD chemistry degree, and I'm not aware of any of our athletes having that.
01:01:03.000It would be very, very difficult to do that.
01:01:05.000And so these detection levels, again, we're talking about nanograms.
01:01:08.000We're not talking about large quantities that would indicate...
01:01:47.000She's taking a look at something that we have access to called the Clearinghouse, and it's basically a recording of all the tests on our athletes.
01:02:01.000The public also has access to our testing records, not with a specificity that the Clearinghouse has, but the public can get on.
01:02:09.000And you saw it on a weekly basis, updates how many tests an athlete's done.
01:02:15.000So there's some guys out there on the Internet from the day one of the program have kept track of what week their numbers tick up.
01:02:22.000So you can go find spreadsheets on the Internet, at least from a weekly basis of when our athletes were tested and how many times every week.
01:02:32.000So the Clearinghouse program is very specific.
01:02:35.000We can get on there and see the actual date of the collection, and next to that we see negative, positive, or pending.
01:02:42.000So Donna came to me late November, early December, saying, hey, I'm looking at John's tests, and I'm seeing pending still back from, I think it was maybe August, September.
01:03:07.000We're talking to other professional sports leagues.
01:03:09.000We're talking to the laboratories out there.
01:03:11.000And don't have an answer for you now, but stand by.
01:03:14.000So I think it was December 6th, they sent a letter to us.
01:03:19.000And they sent a letter to the Nevada State Athletic Commission saying...
01:03:24.000Just so you're aware, over the last six months, early in this six months, we've seen a re-emergence of this long-term metabolite in John's samples.
01:04:38.000October 2nd, October 11th, and November 14th.
01:04:42.000So at this point, late November, early December, USADA says, okay, we've done our studying.
01:04:49.000Those two low levels in August Are residual.
01:04:53.000There's no evidence of any re-administration based on lack of short and medium term and parent.
01:04:59.000Based on our consultation with other leagues, with these labs that are seeing this, we're calling this, this would be double jeopardy if we did them again.
01:05:07.000Okay, so this is something that should be really emphasized because there's a lot of people that don't understand this.
01:05:13.000These are many tests that have been done over the course of John's suspension and then ultimately relicensing that are showing this exact same metabolite at a very similar level that according to previous tests, specifically on clomiphene, that this could be this specifically on clomiphene, that this could be this pulsing result of existing and not existing.
01:05:53.000And again, going back to what one expert, Dr. Bauer, said, you've got to be careful.
01:05:58.000What you're talking about, single, double picograms, and you see some variants, you've got to be careful about saying, well, it went from 9 to 18. That means re-administration.
01:08:37.000Bob came in, Anthony Marnell, the chairman of the commission came in, and a couple of representatives from the Nevada Attorney General's office.
01:08:43.000So they are the ones that prosecute cases involving PED use that violates Nevada regs.
01:08:56.000And look, there's some misconception out there.
01:08:58.000They did not say, this fight's absolutely not happening next week.
01:09:02.000In fact, they, I think, were understanding these issues, but said, look, you know...
01:09:09.000Optically, this doesn't look great, and we feel that out of an abundance of caution that we need to have a public hearing and be very transparent about this, because this is some weird shit.
01:09:24.000This was last Friday, so we're eight days out from the fight.
01:09:26.000So we start talking about, hey, when can we potentially have this?
01:09:30.000And unfortunately, Christmas holiday, several of the commissioners weren't even in town.
01:09:37.000And basically what they said is, look, we will absolutely do this if you want us to, but likely that hearing would not be until today, Thursday, or maybe tomorrow, Friday.
01:09:47.000And And, you know, Marnell's like, look, I'm starting to get my head around this, but I can't guarantee you that my other commissioners or me are going to come out the same way.
01:09:58.000So you're taking a chance here that we could say, well, we need more information.
01:10:04.000So basically, they were willing to listen to it.
01:10:08.000I think they were starting to wrap their heads around it, but didn't feel that they were up to speed enough on it.
01:10:15.000They didn't have the luxury that Andy Foster and California have.
01:10:19.000Remember, when John tested positive in July 2018, that fight was in California.
01:10:25.000Because that fight was in California, California retained jurisdiction.
01:10:30.000They've had two very public hearings on John when they suspended his license, and most recently, a week and a half ago, when they reinstated his license.
01:10:38.000So Andy and the Commission were very familiar with oral turinibol.
01:10:43.000They were very familiar with the long-term metabolite.
01:10:46.000And in fact, Andy was somewhat critical of USADA during the last hearing.
01:10:51.000He thought, after looking at all the details, after reading McLaren's position, that there was no evidence that this was done on purpose.
01:11:00.000He thought, man, maybe they went a little bit hard on him, and he stated that in that second hearing.
01:11:06.000So with the reemergence of the picogram quantity of this M3 long-term metabolite, Andy and the commission, unlike Nevada, didn't need to get up and speed on it.
01:11:17.000They've already had two public hearings on John's issue.
01:11:20.000They were intimately familiar with some of these dynamics of this drug and the metabolites, and that's why he felt comfortable based on their familiarization with it and based on these written absolute statements by these experts that there was no re-ingestion, one.
01:11:38.000And then the second thing, which we haven't covered, is these experts said, based on these low-level picograms, there's no performance-enhancing benefit.
01:11:48.000Because if you would have told UFC, look, this is still remnants from a year and a half ago, but we can't rule out that he's not getting a performance-enhancing benefit from it.
01:12:00.000Well, in that instance, I'll tell you, and I stand by this, I would leave this company if somebody told me otherwise.
01:12:07.000If there was any indication that there would be a benefit from him, even though it technically wasn't a violation, I'm not going to stand by, well, anybody licenses that guy to fight.
01:12:17.000Could this have been somehow or another mitigated by communicating these results to Nevada earlier?
01:12:26.000Well, we didn't announce the fight that John was going to fight in Nevada until October.
01:12:33.000But in October, could you have said, hey, look, here's this issue...
01:14:41.000USADA notifies us, the UFC, that always happens, and they notify if any commission has jurisdiction.
01:14:47.000At this point, this close to a fight, Nevada has jurisdiction.
01:14:51.000So, I get the call, and you can imagine what's going through in my head.
01:14:57.000I mean, I've gotten so many of these calls now, I literally, for the first five or ten minutes, can bury my head in my hand and think through exactly how this thing's going to play out.
01:15:07.000And, you know, it's going to be, hey, Nevada's going to say, wait a second, what's going on here?
01:15:44.000It's some of the worst days of my career when I get these calls.
01:15:49.000But, you know, everyone was notified, and Nevada was in our office two days later, and again, I mean, there's been some criticism of them out there.
01:16:17.000To get this out, this issue with optics, right?
01:16:19.000Because you go on Twitter, everybody's calling them a cheat.
01:16:22.000Everybody's saying that, you know, anybody that sanctions this, you're sanctioning cheating.
01:16:29.000For someone to get an understanding of what this is like, it actually requires probably more than we've done now over the last hour and 15 minutes.
01:16:38.000I mean, Dana and I went on SportsCenter and announced it in a three-minute hit, and I came out of there going, absolutely, everyone in the world is going to say, this is bullshit.
01:17:01.000years to come up with these absolutes there's no one else in the world but maybe a dozen people that can come up with these conclusions you do have to put your you know your faith in in their background and their careers and their knowledge and education and you know i read what those absolutes were that there was no evidence of any re-ingestion this is by multiple um experts and that john would not have retained any performance benefit based on these low-level picogram amounts
01:17:30.000Well, I'm happy that we're going to have this out there, so people, if they have the time, if they're really that interested in it, this is probably a more in-depth discussion of this than you're going to get anywhere else.
01:17:41.000But I really wish we could have gotten something like this to Nevada, and Nevada could have gone over this and looked at what I'm seeing, what you're saying.
01:17:49.000It seems to me that we could have just had some sort of a meeting and kept this fight in Nevada, and it would have saved everybody a lot of heartache.
01:17:57.000Yeah, I mean, I think things were pointing in that, but there was no guarantees in that.
01:18:05.000You know, the other thing that was being looked at was fairness to these athletes.
01:18:09.000Really, you're going to put John and Gus, maybe more importantly, in a position where he doesn't know until two days or a day before whether this fight is happening or not.
01:18:20.000And not even mentioning the other fighters on the card.
01:18:23.000And look, you can talk to, and I have, to Sean and Mick and Dana and Hunter.
01:18:28.000All these fighters want to be on the big pay-per-views.
01:18:32.000the fight at the top of the card the more eyes are on that fight and when you have a spectacular fight in the first second fight on the card if it's on a big pay-per-view with a giant fight at the top of it that can propel your career your next fight you could be fighting the main event on you know a fight pass and progress from there so I think you know I think it's accurate to say that generally everybody wants these these cards to be as big as possible and
01:18:58.000And when all the experts are telling us, A, 100% this isn't a sanction, B, he's not retaining any performance-enhancing benefits, I think, and clearly Dane and Hunter thought this, we have an obligation to do what we can do for fairness, for John, definitely, for Gus, for the rest of the card, to try to make this fight happen.
01:19:18.000Going forward, is there any way we could ever prevent something like this from happening again with a similar situation in a place like Nevada?
01:19:26.000I think we have a couple solutions to that, and it's not necessarily relative to the commission, but one thing that obviously protected John a lot in this was the frequency of testing.
01:19:35.000You know, if you look at his numbers, and these were...
01:19:39.000These were instances where they collected samples, but in many of these cases, they did multiple tests on him.
01:19:44.000And that means, you know, the tests I'm reading were for the anabolic steroid panel.
01:19:48.000But in addition to that, they may have done a biological passport test on that same collection.
01:19:53.000They may have done an HGH test, an EPO test.
01:19:56.000And this is all confidential that USADA doesn't release all this information?
01:19:59.000They release numbers on the publicly available website, but you don't see what those tests are done.
01:20:04.000So the reality, and they just told me this, is John was one of the most, if not the most, tested athlete over these last six months.
01:20:10.000When you look at total amount of tests on his samples, excuse me.
01:20:15.000One thing that obviously protected them here was that volume of testing.
01:20:19.000And so, USADA came to us and said, you know, hey, we think that you probably should, you know, up the amount of tests that you're doing.
01:20:27.000So, we just renewed a contract with USADA and we're increasing our testing numbers by 30 to 40%.
01:20:35.000We currently The first three years of the program, we're under contract for approximately 2,700 tests.
01:20:42.000And starting this next year, we're going to up that to around 4,300, 4,400 tests.
01:20:47.000So I think it's going to be more of a burden.
01:20:50.000You're just out of showing up in more doorsteps early in the morning of more of our athletes.
01:20:55.000But I think this is a perfect example that that increased volume of testing actually can be a protectant.
01:21:00.000To the athlete, especially when you're talking these low-level picogram quantities and contaminated cases and things like that.
01:21:07.000We just got to get athletes to stop taking any supplement that's not third-party tested.
01:21:29.000There's been warfighters who have purchased supplements at bases over in Iraq and Afghanistan that contain ephedrine and other bad products.
01:21:38.000Some of them potentially have died as a result of ingesting them, so they definitely have an interest in safety and dietary supplements.
01:21:47.000What we did is we invited in the major third-party certification companies, and each one took a half day presenting what their programs look like.
01:21:56.000We went back and huddled after each one and huddled at the conclusion and said, what is a platinum standard third-party certification look like?
01:22:04.000All these presentations we got, what was strengths in ones, weaknesses in the others, and we have to put a perfect one together, what does it look like?
01:22:13.000Over the last month, we've been authoring a paper that's going to be published in a scientific journal going over what that gold standard, platinum standard, looks like.
01:22:24.000Going forward, any third-party certification company that can meet that, and there are some that are very close, I think will be able to do it very quickly.
01:22:32.000We are going to say, USADA is going to say, this is an approved line of supplements.
01:22:59.000This is a silly suggestion, but why doesn't the UFC come up with its own supplement line and provide them to the fighters and say, you can't take anything else?
01:23:09.000Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been talked through.
01:23:11.000If they had sponsorships with other supplement lines.
01:23:16.000It's not as easy as doing it overnight and the distribution method.
01:23:20.000If you could say, hey, you could take creatine, you could take all the multivitamins, you could take branched-chain amino acids, all these things that have been proven to be effective, but that's weird too, right?
01:23:33.000It's like they're effective, meaning they enhance performance and recovery, but they don't do enough to be considered a performance-enhancing drug.
01:23:39.000Yeah, and they're present in the food supply, too.
01:23:42.000So, like, you know, basically, you can go eat 10 chicken breasts or, you know, have a couple scoops of protein if you're on the go and don't have time to do it.
01:23:50.000So, I think, again, apples and oranges in terms of performance enhancing or not.
01:23:56.000So, the theory would be we have an approved – when I'm – or Donner asks that question, what's approved?
01:24:01.000I can say – Here's, let's say, NSF. NSF has 1,200 supplements that are approved.
01:24:07.000I'd say, all 1,200 of these are approved.
01:24:25.000They have for the last couple of years, now they have some advantage in that all their athletes are employees and are coming into the same facility during the season.
01:24:35.000So they have some control over theirs.
01:24:42.000But baseball said the only supplements we're allowing in the clubhouse or in a facility are, and they use NSF supplements, they had zero contaminated supplement cases last year.
01:24:54.000They had, I think their testing numbers were four times the amount of our testing numbers and zero contaminated supplements.
01:25:01.000I mean, the proof's in the pudding right there.
01:25:03.000So they have some sort of a deal with NSF? I don't know if it's a deal other than they've examined who those certification companies are and they feel that they're, you know, at the top of the line.
01:25:16.000That's why we're contributing to this paper to say, look, anyone could be one of these approved lines, but you must meet this criteria for a platinum standard program.
01:25:24.000But it's coming from someone who's in a supplement business, me.
01:25:32.000There's a lot of shit out there that's just...
01:25:34.000They purposely add performance-enhancing drugs to their stuff because it's cheap, and people take it, and they experience these gains, and then they sell a lot of it.
01:25:46.000I saw that when I was with the FDA. What they normally will do for maybe the first six months of the product, they'll spike it with something if they're going that route, and then to decrease liability thereafter, they've already got the following...
01:26:11.000It's really such a shame because this is such a fantastic fight.
01:26:15.000I mean, there's so much drama involved already, just having Jon Jones returning, having Alexander Gustafson looking absolutely sensational in his last fight with Glover Teixeira, all the trash talk and hype and intensity and the fact that this is really, other than DC vs Jon, this is the fight that people want to see in the light heavyweight division.
01:26:34.000And look, nobody's saying, and I'm certainly not saying that John didn't do anything wrong.
01:28:35.000The USADA program requires you to disclose everything you've used going back 12 months or one year.
01:28:42.000The idea being, look, even though you weren't under the program, if you used oral torrentibole eight or nine months ago, There could still be an advantage that you'd be getting.
01:28:53.000We're not going to necessarily suspend you because you weren't subject to the program then, but we're not going to let you fight right away.
01:28:59.000You're going to have to be in the program for a certain amount of time testing clean.
01:29:02.000So he didn't disclose that he was using anything.
01:29:05.000His first test, he tests positive for M3 metabolite, low levels.
01:29:11.000He goes to arbitration, argues, testifies under oath.
01:29:24.000USADA goes to them and says, hold on a second.
01:29:26.000We're looking into this matter, talking to baseball, whatever.
01:29:30.000USADA comes out that, hey, we can't prove that this didn't enter his substance a year before that disclosure required him to disclose what he was using.
01:29:40.000So he was basically let off and eligible.
01:29:42.000So John's not the only person in the UFC that this has happened to, notwithstanding other professional sports leagues, other Olympics.
01:29:56.000So, I think what's important for people, I get the skepticism, but I think it's very important that people don't accuse someone of something that they didn't do.
01:30:07.000And I want you, if you're listening to this, I want you to imagine if you're Jon Jones and you're trying to get your shit together and you didn't do anything new, you didn't do anything different.
01:30:18.000We've got to have a path of redemption for people.
01:30:34.000If he's not cheating, and if it's showing that these are these long-term residual metabolites that are in incredibly small dosages, There's real cheaters out there, and John's fucked up.
01:30:45.000He has fucked up, and you were all right to be upset at him when he fucked up.
01:30:49.000This is not, at least as my conclusion after talking to you, and I've talked to some independent scientists that were skeptical about some of the aspects of it, but they're also...
01:30:59.000They're skeptical because they're not up to date, perhaps, on the differences in this pulsing effect or the fact that this is something that is relatively...
01:31:16.000This is something that's relatively new in terms of our ability to understand picograms, our ability to understand this pulsing effect, all these different variables that you have to take into account when it comes to this.
01:31:41.000So, you know, a couple things in the future that people can look forward to.
01:31:45.000We want, and John wants to fight Nevada again, and Nevada has basically said, look, I think we understand this issue, but we need to have this hearing.
01:31:52.000There will be a public hearing on this, my understanding is early quarter one.
01:31:56.000So, look, you know, don't take my word for it.
01:32:31.000And again, I have to take an objective look about is this fair as it relates to how our policy and what the rules are.
01:32:38.000And, you know, when you have, you know, one of the experts in the world, Dr. Daniel Eichner of the Smyrtle Laboratory, issue an absolute statement like there is no evidence that DHCMT has been readministered.
01:32:52.000And that based on these low levels, he does not retaining a performance enhancing benefit.
01:32:58.000How out of fairness and implementing the program do you prevent this fight from happening?
01:33:08.000Moving forward from here, what changes and what do we do to stop something like this from happening?
01:33:13.000Well, again, I think the increased volume of testing is going to help.
01:33:16.000I think being able to specifically direct our athletes to approve line of supplements will help.
01:33:24.000But, you know, hey, we can, Don and I can message the hell out of these things, but, you know, it takes the athletes in their camps to listen to what we're saying.
01:33:34.000So, I mean, if anything good comes out of this, hopefully it's a warning to those others out there about how careful you need to be.
01:33:42.000So, just to wrap this up, so people understand, if you want to put a button on this, there's no evidence whatsoever of any microdosing.
01:34:22.000No parent compound ever found as well.
01:34:24.000These are the only tests we have that show these long-term, short-term, and medium-term The short-term and the medium-term ones that would be indicative of him taking it recently don't exist at any point in time during these testings.
01:34:40.000So this is most likely something that is inside of his body that is in incredibly small levels.
01:34:46.000And is it safe to say that the detection levels, that the detection methods are far superior today than they were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago?
01:34:58.000Increase by thousands of percentage points in sensitivity.
01:35:41.000I don't want to profess that I am, but what do I have to go to?
01:35:46.000I need to go to those experts that have made careers out of studying these substances and the benefits, and they are all...
01:35:52.000Universally telling me that there's no performance enhancing benefit.
01:35:55.000Full compliance by Jon Jones in terms of being there for USADA at every single test, notifying his whereabouts, doing everything by the book in terms of what the UFC requires and what USADA requires.
01:36:07.000Yeah, so our program has a three-strike policy.
01:36:10.000So basically, you know, if you miss a test for an unexplained reason three times, then it could be a violation.
01:36:17.000Jon's never had one whereabouts strike.
01:36:19.000He's always been available when USADA's tried to test him.
01:36:22.000And again, especially recently, one of the most tested athletes in the UFC. Wasn't there one test in the past where USADA showed up at the gym and there was some sort of speculation that John was hiding under the ring?
01:36:34.000Pre-USADA. That was pre-USADA before I got here.
01:36:47.000So there's no reason in terms of how you're looking at this particular case that this fight should not take place or that John should be sanctioned any further?
01:36:58.000And look, it's the least compelling argument, but I think you have to look at it.
01:37:03.000You have to look at the common sense approach to this.
01:37:06.000A guy who went through a year and a half almost suspension, two very, I would categorize as embarrassing public hearings in California, a long arbitration hearing before McLaren.
01:37:19.000all this science is rooted out about how long this stuff stays in your system, long-term metabolites for months, maybe years, you're going to choose to use oral tyrinobol still after going through all that leading up to a fight?
01:37:35.000See, I agree with what you're saying, but in terms of people fucking up, there are no bounds.
01:37:43.000On human stupidity, and in terms of people's ability to do impulsive things that are irrational, that wind up sabotaging their career, there's almost more of an indication that people are willing to do that than not.
01:37:57.000You're less likely, and this is in terms of, especially in fighters.
01:38:04.000It's one of the things that categorizes, it's a characteristic of the type of human being that gets involved in that John is a new level crazy guy.
01:39:04.000And it's one of many reasons besides his talent that he's so goddamn good.
01:39:09.000I know the lows of the lows he's gone through these last two years.
01:39:14.000You wouldn't believe how low those lows were.
01:39:16.000So again, look, I don't disagree with you that that's not out of the area of consideration, but man, I just don't think anybody could be that reckless.
01:39:32.000Oftentimes and I'm not accusing John of doing this but oftentimes surround themselves with morons and these morons give them poor advice and these morons Think that they have ways to skirt systems and and get around the rules and they have people that you know Throw much fancy words their way and they want to believe and this happens all the time this happens all the time with fighters in regards to financial management and And advice that they get with that.
01:39:59.000I mean, I've seen, like, world-class fighters do ridiculous shit in terms of strength and conditioning because some asshole with a good vocabulary talks them into some nonsense.
01:40:09.000This is just one of the things that happens with fighters, and oftentimes they can be around someone who gives them poor advice in terms of what they can and cannot get away with.
01:40:18.000When it comes to supplementation and when it comes to steroid use.
01:40:25.000In John's case, however, to give credit where credit's due, you know, his team, after the initial positive with the dick pills, was very interactive with me and Donna.
01:40:34.000And, you know, checking supplements, hey, what line should we go to show?
01:40:38.000They, you know, to give them credit, they definitely showed an increased exercise of care when it came to supplementation with John.
01:40:44.000Well that's great to hear and I really hope this is a thing of the past and I hope this is the last time we ever have to talk about John in this term and that moving forward we just talk about him in terms of his performances and his fights and what he's already achieved.
01:40:57.000He's already the youngest UFC champion of all time.
01:42:15.000I was at the MMA Awards last year, and some yahoo had a few pops back at me screaming in between presentations, the golden snitch is in the...
01:43:37.000I'm like, dude, if you can, without even having to touch somebody, just stand up by your presence alone and control something like that, I mean, the best I've ever seen.
01:44:21.000So, two days ago, Christmas morning, I'm opening up presents.
01:44:26.000So I get the presents from my daughters, the three of them, and my middle daughter's very artistic, and so they create these cool sculpted beer mugs, and there's four of them.
01:44:34.000One of them's like Bald Guy Brewing Novitski something, and one of them says Golden Snitch Brewing Company.
01:44:40.000So it's a cool looking thing, and she drew me a black and white kind of rendition of all four, which I'm going to hang up really cool.
01:44:47.000So then my girlfriend's there, so she hands me the box, and she's been telling me all along, she goes, I got you the best fucking present ever in the history of presents.
01:48:04.000This is cutting-edge science we're talking about.
01:48:08.000There's too many people that would have a vested interest in calling bullshit.
01:48:13.000They don't fuck around when it comes to these things.
01:48:16.000The people that are at the front of the line when it comes to catching people on these things and the science that they're imploring, that they're involved with, you can't guess on the outside with no education.
01:48:32.000And this is what I keep seeing over and over again.
01:48:34.000It's people that have some knowledge, a little bit of knowledge, and they're pretending that they have a PhD in this shit.
01:48:44.000For those that want to do more detective work, go read McLaren's written decision on John's July 2018 test.
01:48:55.000Go read the Rechenkov study on the DHCMT and the metabolites, and go read the recent clomiphene study where it shows this chlorinated substance.