Jeff Nowitzki joins the show to talk about his new role with the UFC, his new nickname, and how he got into the sport of basketball. He also talks about how he and Dana White came up with the name "The Golden Snitch" and why he thinks it's a good name for a basketball player. Jeff also gives us the inside scoop on his new job at the UFC and talks about what it's like to be a part of one of the most successful sports organizations in the world. Jeff is a former NBA player who played for the Dallas Mavericks, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the New York Knicks. He is a current UFC employee and has worked with some of the greatest athletes in the history of the sport including Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Conor McGregor, and many more! He also shares some of his favorite memories from his time in the NBA and gives us some insight into his life as a player and what it s like to work for the UFC. Enjoy the episode and don't forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe to our new podcast, The Ringer! Subscribe, Share and Retweet to stay up to date with the latest sports news and discuss the latest happenings in sports and everything else going on around the world of sports and beyond! Enjoy! -Joe Rogan and Adam Caplan -The Ringer Subscribe and Share the Roster! (featuring: Jeff, Adam, Jeff, and Shab, Joe Rogan and the Ringer's newest podcast, "The Roster, The Roster Room" & much, much, MUCH MORE! and much more! -Jon Rocha, including: And much more. - The Rapper, . and so much more... to be sure you'll know who's getting a shot of the best in the game! ...and much more!! in the Rapper is getting a chance to be heard on the pod! Thanks for listening to the RING! ! Thank you for listening and reviewing this episode of The RING & much more!!! ... , and Thanks, Jon and his RING WITH THE RING OF THE ROSTER! & ( ) is a big thank you for your support is much appreciated! . . AND for your continued support!
00:01:52.000You know, she got everybody to the event, set up hotel at the event, ran the crew, you know, the blue shirts backstage that run the event.
00:02:01.000You know, I think after doing it for many years, she got a little burnout on it.
00:02:05.000So went to Dana midsummer and says, look, I don't think I want to do this anymore.
00:02:11.000But I'd really love to do something else.
00:02:13.000And I've seen kind of what Jeff's doing in his program.
00:02:16.000I'd really like to go over there and work with him and kind of learn, you know, what he's doing.
00:02:21.000And so Dana pulled me into the office and said, hey, what do you think about this idea?
00:02:25.000And it took me literally a half second to say 100% on board.
00:02:29.000This woman, as you probably know, is about as attention to detail and passionate about her work as anybody.
00:02:36.000And really, my positioning, unlike the name The Golden Snitch, is an advocate to our athletes to make sure our athletes are successful under the program, not that they fail under the program.
00:03:27.000She's awesome, so I'm super psyched that she's with you.
00:03:30.000So what exactly does she do for you guys?
00:03:32.000Again, when I sat her down this summer, I said, look, your role here is going to make sure that the athletes are successful under the program.
00:03:39.000And in a program like this, there are so many landmines, whether it be making sure your whereabouts filing is on time, making sure USADA knows where you're at so they can come do a collection from you at any time.
00:03:52.000Making sure you make safe supplement choices.
00:03:55.000Making sure the medications you're taking are correct.
00:03:59.000So she, you know, works hard for all those things.
00:04:01.000I give you the prime example of what she brings to this program.
00:04:05.000So every three months, every quarter, every single athlete on the roster is required to file what's called quarterly whereabouts.
00:04:32.000Before you came along, a huge issue in the sport and continues to be in other organizations, particularly overseas.
00:04:38.000I mean, there's just rampant speculation about companies that literally encourage people to take steroids.
00:04:44.000It was always the case with Pride in Japan.
00:04:47.000That was one of the big things about Pride.
00:04:50.000in any way who fought for them many times came on the podcast and literally was saying in the contract, in like capital letters, it says, we will not test you for steroids.
00:05:00.000Like they wanted everybody to take steroids.
00:05:01.000I had friends who went to fight over there.
00:05:04.000They told them to take steroids and move up a weight class.
00:05:07.000So it was always an issue in the sport that this was a dirty sport, air quotes, right?
00:05:13.000But since you've come along and since you guys started instituting this incredibly strict testing, we've seen some pretty radical changes.
00:05:22.000We've seen some amazing fights and amazing performances, and I don't think the performance levels dropped.
00:05:26.000In fact, I think it escalated and elevated, rather, which is something that people were really concerned about.
00:05:30.000But one thing that we did see is some people that you suspected of doing stuff, their bodies radically changed.
00:05:37.000It was really, I mean, that became a meme, pre-USADA and post-USADA. I mean, and there's some comedy memes out there because of it, because people's bodies change so radically.
00:06:28.000A big part of my job is getting out and building relationships with our fighters, With managers, with coaches, and just, you know, chewing on their ear and figuring out what they're seeing and what they're hearing.
00:06:42.000And almost universally, the feedback I get from them is, this is making a big difference.
00:06:49.000You know, one thing I brought with me today, and really the coolest piece of data I think I've seen in any anti-doping program, are some really objective, measurable statistics in the UFC anti-doping program.
00:07:02.000USADA is the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
00:07:05.000They're the official anti-doping agency of the United States by an act of Congress.
00:07:10.000They're in charge of all drug testing for U.S. Olympic sports.
00:07:15.000Back in 2015, we made the decision to outsource the administration of our program to USADA. The primary reason being the independence factor.
00:07:26.000When you look at all these other professional sports leagues, some have better programs than others.
00:07:32.000None really have any independence in the administration of that program.
00:07:35.000And what that means is there's no way of telling whether or not, you know, when an athlete is sanctioned, it's done for business reasons or done for favoritism.
00:07:44.000So in our program, you know, no one can say that any of the administration of our program is done for that reason.
00:07:53.000So what USADA did recently is they went back and they've been in existence since I think about 2001 on the US Olympic level.
00:08:00.000They went back and took a look at every single doper, I think for steroids.
00:08:05.000Everyone was caught for steroids in the existence of the USADA program.
00:08:09.000And took a look at each of those athletes' biological passports and biological markers.
00:08:14.000And they looked at what was the most common factor for the doper versus, you know, the non-doper.
00:08:21.000And what they determined was what stood out the most was large variance in testosterone excretion in the urine.
00:08:30.000And when you think about it from a common sense point of view, that kind of makes sense in that someone who's using steroids at that time presents a sample, their testosterone excretion is probably going to be on the higher end.
00:08:43.000And if they were to catch a doper on an off cycle, what happens when you get off steroids is your body suppresses production of testosterone.
00:08:51.000So in that case, you're going to see a very low excretion of testosterone.
00:08:56.000So they looked at that and plotted it out and saw, hey, every doper has a very large variance in testosterone excretion.
00:09:02.000Then what they did is they took all the UFC samples and they plotted them out by quarter and actually brought a graph along with me.
00:09:10.000And it's some really drastic, I think, visual evidence of the success and the impact of this program.
00:09:17.000I don't know if you can throw that up and take a look at it.
00:09:22.000So what year exactly did USADA take over?
00:09:27.000Yeah, so USADA came into play July of 2015. So USADA has been in existence for two years.
00:09:33.000So you see here that first quarter, quarter three of 2015, a pretty decent variance there, which means in any given test, an athlete was up on an average, a little bit of 30, a little in the mid-20s.
00:09:48.000And then look at, as you plot out that graph, That variance becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and more in the medium range as it gets out to quarter three of 2017. That's very interesting.
00:10:05.000I've been involved in anti-doping world since 2002. And I can unequivocally say that this is the strongest visual, objective, measurable evidence of success of a program that I've ever seen.
00:10:18.000One of the things that's so fascinating about this, and this goes to credit to the UFC 100%, is that they decided to do something about this.
00:10:29.000This wasn't like someone coming after them because, you know, so many people had been caught and someone said, hey, we're going to put a program on you guys to make sure you're not doping.
00:10:40.000Well, the UFC said, we've got to clean this up.
00:11:09.000Hey, it's a credit to two people, Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White, that made that decision.
00:11:15.000That's a hell of a risky decision, but done for all the right reasons.
00:11:19.000You know, anybody that contends that, you know, Dana doesn't care about his athletes need look no further than this program.
00:11:25.000This program is of tremendous risk to the company and to the bottom line.
00:11:29.000When you're testing athletes 365 days a year, unannounced, no predictability of when the test is coming, there can be some very severe consequences.
00:11:43.000UFC 200, arguably the landmark event in the history of the UFC. We lose our main event the Wednesday before UFC 200. Millions, if not tens of millions, into the marketing of that.
00:12:01.000The success of the pay-per-view probably hinges on that great main event between John and Daniel.
00:12:08.000And we lost it three or four days before, and that could happen at any given moment.
00:12:13.000Now, we talked about this before the podcast, what you could or could not talk about with the current state of John Jones' investigation.
00:12:38.000They say, you know, in the case of John, John tested positive in an in-competition test on this date.
00:12:46.000You know, more information will be provided at the appropriate time.
00:12:49.000That's generally all we'll talk about.
00:12:51.000Now, if the athlete chooses to talk about, you know, scenarios of what happened, then they're free to do that.
00:12:58.000At that point, you saw it in the UFC. You can comment on it.
00:13:01.000So there's been some things talked about in the John case by John.
00:13:06.000Particularly, he had two clean tests on July 7th and July 8th.
00:13:12.000Before his positive test on, I think, July 30th, which was weigh-in day.
00:13:16.000And the positive test was for dihydrochloromethyl testosterone, or oral terenobol.
00:13:23.000This is a substance that was used by the East Germans regularly in the late 60s, and then came into the fold a little bit more of what's come out recently out of Russia.
00:13:34.000So I know you had Brian Fogel on for the Icarus movie.
00:13:38.000I think he talked a little bit about this.
00:13:42.000Gregory, the head of the Moscow Wada laboratory, this drug became kind of part of his protocol with his athletes.
00:13:49.000He then, ironically enough, developed a test for the long-term metabolites of the drug.
00:13:56.000So previous to that, the detection window of this drug was a couple of days.
00:14:00.000So it was a drug that, you know, even if you run a strict program, an athlete may gamble with taking because it had a quick clearance time.
00:14:08.000After he discovered the long-term metabolite test, that changed.
00:14:12.000It went from a detection window of a couple days to a detection window of several months.
00:14:23.000They went back and retested some samples, and there was a whole bunch of positives.
00:14:27.000And then it got out 2013 around that there was this new test.
00:14:32.000Right up front, you know, I've said this a while now, is would not make a lot of sense for an individual, a UFC athlete that knew, you know, especially, you know, a champion contender like John Jones that knew, hey, I'm tested quite regularly in this program, would not make a lot of sense that that would be your drug of choice if you were intentionally trying to cheat.
00:14:54.000I think it's come out after the fact that USADA did another test on John a month or two or a couple months after his positive test, and he was negative during that test.
00:15:06.000So that would be indicative that the prohibited substance entered his system sometime after July 7th or 8th and was likely a pretty small amount in that it cleared his system pretty quickly.
00:15:23.000Again, who knows where it plays out, but certainly on the surface of things I have said, at this point in the game, with that type of information out there, it wouldn't indicate intentional use.
00:15:37.000I don't know that definitively, and we'll see how this plays out.
00:15:41.000Right now, where the process is, is John and USADA are working closely.
00:15:46.000I'm aware that there was a meeting a week or two ago, a pretty lengthy meeting, Which I was told was productive.
00:15:52.000I wasn't given details of what productive meant.
00:15:55.000But I think that's an important thing right now and that John's following through with is to retrace all of his steps between that last July 8th negative test and the positive test on July 29th or July 30th.
00:16:09.000It certainly seems like, based on what you just said, that this is something that was accidentally taken.
00:16:15.000But if you can't prove that something was accidentally taken, like if you can't nail it down, what happens there?
00:16:23.000And that's kind of the nightmare scenario that an athlete can face.
00:16:27.000And a big role of what Donna and I do to prevent that from happening, to show them what type of care and consideration is needed to make sure you don't get into a scenario like that.
00:16:38.000You know, under a program like this, you have to be careful about everything that's put into your body.
00:16:46.000And if you're not, there can be, you know, severe consequences.
00:16:51.000So, yeah, we'll see where this plays out.
00:16:53.000I tell you the one thing that I can say about this is, you know, this is obviously John's second time in the program with testing positive.
00:17:01.000And the first time He went through a pretty lengthy appeal process, and there was a publicly issued decision, 50, 60 pages, that went through all the evidence that the independent arbitrators heard and decided on.
00:17:20.000And what they said definitively in that case was John, there was no evidence that John intentionally cheated.
00:17:27.000However, he operated with careless, reckless disregard.
00:17:30.000So he ended up getting the maximum for those substances he tested positive for a year.
00:17:35.000And that was for some gas station Viagra type shit?
00:17:38.000Well, it was actually a couple of anti-estrogen drugs, but what was shown and what the evidence pointed to was that he took...
00:17:46.000A pill that was manufactured from a website by the name of All American Peptide.
00:17:51.000The pill was reported to be a Cialis pill, so an erectile dysfunction pill that was tainted with these two drugs.
00:18:00.000Now the problem with what the arbitrator said is if he would have gone to that website, and the arbitrators did and I did, you would have seen that that same website offered Tons of prohibited performance-enhancing drugs.
00:18:13.000And the website said, not for human consumption, for research purposes only.
00:18:21.000That being said, however, John's second time through the program now, the second sanction, this time for an anabolic-type steroid, would have a starting point, potentially, of a four-year suspension.
00:18:37.000That could be a starting point, right, unless there are mitigating factors.
00:18:40.000Now, I don't, you know, again, the beauty of this program is it's not the UFC or not me deciding, you know, what the sanction is going to be.
00:18:47.000No one can accuse us of, you know, operating for business purposes or favoritism or whatever.
00:18:53.000But that being said, You know, when we put this program together and figured out, you know, what sanctioning would look like, I don't necessarily think that we put up a four-year sanction for a second-term offense when the first-term offense was shown that that person didn't cheat intentionally, just operated with careless disregard.
00:19:18.000They compare it to other cases under the WADA Olympic-type umbrella, similar cases.
00:19:25.000I will say this, that I think we've had a few over 60 positive adverse events in this case and those that have been adjudicated.
00:19:34.000I've been comfortable every time that they've made a fair and balanced and reasonable decision.
00:19:40.000Part of my job is to be the eyes and ears for athletes to make sure not only is the program being administered properly and has strength, but also that they're being treated fairly and that they have due process.
00:19:51.000So I have all the confidence in the world, however this does come out, that it will be the right decision.
00:19:56.000The other really cool thing about the program is the transparency of the program.
00:20:00.000So, you know, it won't just be me saying this.
00:20:03.000However it does come out, whether it goes to arbitration or whether John and USADA reach a settlement, it'll be well spelled out about why that sanction was determined.
00:20:13.000Now, you say starting point, meaning that it could potentially be more?
00:20:18.000So when there's something called aggravating circumstances, so more than just knowingly taking the drug, taking the drug and lying, trying to cover it up.
00:20:28.000Taking multiple drugs, one trying to hide the other.
00:20:31.000Yeah, you could get double the sanction amount.
00:20:35.000So on a second time, anabolic steroid, four years is kind of the starting point.
00:20:40.000You can go lower for mitigating factors.
00:20:42.000You can go higher for aggravating factors, up to eight years.
00:20:47.000So yeah, it would have to require something really severe and egregious to get up that high.
00:21:23.000I mean, there was nothing in USADA's reasoning or their announcement of why it was two years about, you know, any type of mitigating factor coming from another substance.
00:21:32.000And someone had said, or had read, I didn't really investigate very deeply into this, but I remember reading that he had put some sort of cream on, and that that cream was responsible for him testing positive.
00:21:56.000Usually in those instances where the evidence does show that, you will see a mitigating factor come into play and a reduction in a sanction.
00:22:06.000And there have been some guys that have gotten pretty low sentences, like Tim Means is a good example, right?
00:22:11.000Tim Means did take something that was tainted, and you guys, or USADA, got some of those samples from independent stores, found out those were also tainted.
00:22:53.000He sent me, you know, maybe a half dozen supplements.
00:22:57.000Did some research on them, reached out to contacts I still have in the industry from my law enforcement days and said, hey, any of these raise suspicions?
00:23:06.000And there was one that did by a company that made some other kind of sketchy products.
00:23:11.000We narrowed in on that one pretty quickly.
00:23:14.000sent it to USADA to a WADA laboratory, tested it.
00:23:17.000Sure enough, it had the substance in it.
00:23:19.000Then what happens is USADA will independently procure some themselves.
00:23:24.000So outside of the kind of touch of the athlete to make sure the athlete's not contaminating with it for a built-in excuse, they were able to get some that was sealed and unopened.
00:23:34.000And sure enough, it had that substance in it.
00:23:37.000It had the same amount of the substance in it that kind of matched up with how much was in Tim's system and when he said he had taken it last.
00:23:44.000So there's a lot of detective work that comes into it.
00:23:47.000And I get this question a lot from fighters saying, hey, the supplement excuse is a bullshit excuse that, you know, There's athletes using stuff, and they have supplements in their closet that they know are tainted, and then boom, if they test it positive, they just have that built-in excuse.
00:24:03.000And what I tell them is it goes deeper than that.
00:24:06.000There's literally scientific detective work that's going on from the USADA side, making sure everything matches, making sure they independently procure the product, Making sure what turns up in the athlete's system based on when they say they were taking it matches exactly the level that's in the product based on metabolism timings.
00:24:28.000And I do have a lot of confidence when USADA says, hey, it does match that this came from an unknowingly or unintentional ingestion that it really is that.
00:24:38.000Now, in a case like Tim Means, why is he suspended if someone does give him a tainted supplement and he takes it in good faith, thinking that it's just creatine?
00:25:17.000A company you're involved with, and you guys third-party certify a lot of your product.
00:25:22.000And what that means is you outsource random testing of the product and sampling of the product from these independent companies to make sure they contain no...
00:25:51.000And you can go to their websites, and they have lists of all certified products, and there's hundreds of them.
00:25:57.000So there's no excuse that you can't find, as a UFC athlete, products that are tested and independently certified as banned substance-free.
00:26:07.000And if it were the case, and it's not saying that it couldn't happen because those companies aren't testing every single bottle of product, but if you're an athlete, you take a third-party certified product, you record it, you log it, and it turns out to be from that product, I think then you're reaching a level where the mitigating factors maybe do get you down to No sanction, you know a public warning or something.
00:26:30.000Hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't use supplements at all type of thing, right?
00:26:33.000So his error was just taking something that was not third-party correct and just not doing his homework on a company Seems like a lot but in reality most fighters It's really he's really only got about three months off because most fighters after a fight are gonna take a few months off anyway Probably.
00:26:48.000I mean, it seems harsh, but there is an obligation that fighters need to do their homework, and you need to have a bit of a deterrent there to make sure they do it, and that's that deterrent.
00:26:58.000Now, one of the things that I thought was really cool about the UFC Performance Institute, which is just...
00:27:04.000There's so much cool about that place.
00:27:06.000But one of the things that was really cool is that you guys have a station where an athlete can go in and check any sort of substance, any cold medication they're taking, anything, type in the name of it, and it'll tell you on this giant tablet whether or not...
00:27:24.000So it's the USADA kiosk and we have like a little iPad in there and it's between the locker rooms and the recovery room.
00:27:30.000So it's, you know, you've got your hot cool and your cold pool and your sauna and your cryo and all that stuff.
00:27:37.000So it's a constant reminder as our athletes are in that flow between that area because they all walk through there every day that USADA is a part of the sport, that we're a clean sport.
00:27:47.000That you have an obligation to check on medications, supplements, and you have an obligation to file your whereabouts.
00:27:53.000They can also file whereabouts at that kiosk.
00:27:56.000And we get athletes all the time walking down that corridor saying, ah, shit, forgot to tell USADA, flew out to Las Vegas at the PI. Boom, they can get on in a minute or two and update where they're at.
00:28:41.000And then all that information you put through the web browser is downloaded to your mobile phone app.
00:28:47.000So that as your plans change over the next couple weeks, couple months, you can do 45 second to one minute updates through your mobile app.
00:28:58.000There's really no excuse in not letting USADA know where you're at.
00:29:03.000There are repercussions if you don't let them know where you're at because you want to avoid somebody ducking and dodging a test.
00:29:11.000I know Cowboy had a situation where he was actually in Vegas at the fights and they were mad at him because he didn't say that he was going to be in Vegas.
00:29:21.000I'm on TV. Don and I do everything we can to try to let USADA know when we know that a fighter has a UFC obligation.
00:29:29.000So whether they're a guest fighter on the road, whether they're at a competition, we're always passing that information along to USADA. But we also tell them that ultimately it's your responsibility as an athlete.
00:29:40.000We'll try to, but we can't guarantee it ultimately is going to fall on you if you don't update USADA. Now, the good thing about this is you're afforded a couple mistakes under the whereabouts program.
00:29:49.000So it's not until three whereabouts failures in any rolling 12-month period that there can be sanctions because, honestly, I mean, things happen in your life.
00:30:16.000I can talk knowledgeably about how to do this.
00:30:18.000We went out to Anaheim for UFC. I forget what number that was.
00:30:24.000We take a trip down from Anaheim to San Diego.
00:30:27.000We went down to this clinic that we were checking out for brain therapy.
00:30:31.000She forgot to update that she was going to San Diego.
00:30:33.000She was more than two hours outside of where she was supposed to be, where USADA knew she was going to be.
00:30:38.000She would have gotten a whereabouts failure.
00:30:40.000Again, one of the most responsible people that I've ever been around goes to show that it's challenging.
00:30:46.000So she has to notify where she's going to be?
00:30:48.000We do it voluntarily just so we can talk knowledgeably to our athletes so that when they say, hey, this is too hard, we say, well, we do it.
00:30:58.000Here's a little trick that I have to remind myself each day where I said I'm going to be at, things like that.
00:31:03.000Now, when you have a fighter like Holly Holm, I think, said she was tested nine times in preparation for this fight against Cyborg.
00:31:15.000I know you can't say when the test is going to happen because it won't be random, but is there any consideration about the sleep cycle of the fighters?
00:31:23.000Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, USADA never lets me know when a test is coming.
00:31:27.000I have zero input in terms of who's being tested, and that is the reality.
00:31:32.000A lot of times they show up 5.30, 6 in the morning.
00:31:35.000That seems like it would really suck for fighters.
00:32:23.000But that, I think she should, not enough credit is given to her.
00:32:27.000Now, why do they test her so many times?
00:32:29.000Because I haven't heard any suspicions of her being dirty.
00:32:32.000No, neither have I. And, you know, I think as you look at the testing statistics, and that's another cool thing about this program, I don't know if you know that, but all these test numbers are publicly available.
00:32:43.000So the transparency in this program is unprecedented, unparalleled as it comes to professional sports.
00:32:49.000There's no other professional sport on the planet where you or I, as a fan of the UFC, could say, Let me see how many times Holly's been tested, how many times Cyborg's been tested.
00:33:01.000But if you look at those numbers, and I'll occasionally look at them, I think those athletes with staying power, those athletes that are at the tops of their division have more tests directed to them versus, you know, athletes at the bottom that are jumping in and out.
00:33:14.000They want to make, I think, you saw a good use of their resources to make sure that they're directing most of those tests.
00:33:20.000Those athletes are going to be around for a while.
00:33:22.000I mean, we saw what a badass Holly is on Saturday night.
00:33:36.000I say, hey, wear this as a badge of honor.
00:33:38.000You know, I know it's a burden, but, man, that makes you even more special of an athlete that you, you know, take that burden on and embrace it and show the world that you're, you know, not only a badass athlete, but you're doing this clean.
00:33:51.000One of the things I thought was really fascinating about the UFC Performance Institute is that machine where you lie down, and it scans your entire body, and it shows where your muscle imbalances are.
00:34:02.000What are all the different details that that thing focuses on?
00:34:05.000Yeah, I mean, we talked about this when you toured it, but you've got to get some of the personnel from the PI in there that can really talk knowledgeably and have that education experience.
00:34:17.000Not only is that as you saw that facility world-class but they staffed it with the perfect world-class personnel so that machine is called a DEXA scan and you know I can't give it the justice that the personnel can there but it yet measures body composition so it'll measure you know fat hydration levels bone density bone density yeah and how's it how's it doing that Some type of low-level x-ray.
00:34:44.000Again, you've got to get those guys in there to describe it specifically.
00:34:47.000But, you know, and I'm sure it's a topic we'll cover today, the whole weight issue, being in the proper weight class and weight cutting.
00:34:55.000Both the equipment and now the personnel is in place at the Performance Institute that there's no excuse for an athlete to not, A, find their right weight class, and B, You know, safely, efficiently meet that weight goal when they're fighting.
00:35:11.000Everything is in place now there for that.
00:35:13.000Now, when a fighter comes to you guys and lies down on that machine, and you read their hydration levels and say they're slightly dehydrated, and yet they're still 10 pounds above the weight class, how do you handle that?
00:35:27.000So we have a director of sports nutrition, a guy by the name of Clint Wattenberg.
00:35:32.000And Clint was a Division I All-American at Cornell.
00:35:58.000He's Ivy League educated in sports nutrition.
00:36:02.000And in a situation like that, Yeah, he's, you know, giving advice to the fighters about how the importance of hydration and trying to change that around so that they can meet those goals.
00:36:13.000Yeah, there's the machine right there.
00:36:26.000That sounds like something that someone would say in a cartoon, like a fake word.
00:36:30.000It measures body composition, including lean mass, muscle tissue, fat mass, and bone density.
00:36:34.000Measuring and tracking all three of these components is important for weight class sport athletes and helps guide nutrition recommendations.
00:36:51.000It was interesting when Forrest was doing, Forrest Griffin was telling me that when he had it done, he found out that one of his legs has two pounds more muscle than the other leg because he had had some knee injuries and he really had no idea.
00:37:02.000I mean, so Forrest is a big part of that.
00:37:05.000Performance Institute was a big part of, you know, touring other facilities around the world.
00:37:10.000I think him and James Kimball, who's our VP of Operations at the PI, went to 61 or 62 facilities throughout the world and took what they believe were the best parts of these facilities and put them all to one.
00:37:22.000And Forrest's role there is, you know, kind of similar to my role in the anti-doping program, an advocate for our athletes.
00:37:30.000He's there to make sure, as a former fighter, knowing what works and what doesn't work.
00:37:35.000We're looking at a video of this thing right now and it looks like Star Trek.
00:38:09.000Therapy you need go work out with our strength and conditioning coach Bo Sandoval puts you through the the ringers and the equipment there Then do a little recovery after that really give you the full experience.
00:38:20.000Yeah, that place is amazing how you guys get it set up and it's it's really a Massive resource for fighters that if because there's a lot of great gyms out there But I don't think I've ever seen one that's that well equipped that you guys have everything you have Complete strength and conditioning system area.
00:38:40.000Then you have a complete area with heavy bags, a cage, boxing ring, and then you have a complete recovery area.
00:40:00.000He saw the place, and he moved up and moved everything he had.
00:40:03.000I don't think he knew anybody in Las Vegas or had any friends there, because he's just walking around the office all day long when he's not at the PI. From France.
00:40:14.000Exactly, but you know a perfect example of seeing what that place could do for him and that's available to every single fighter on the roster.
00:40:21.000Yeah, I mean there's nothing like it and my prediction is that the UFC is going to be the hub where most people live.
00:40:27.000The only thing that's wrong there is the altitude.
00:40:30.000That's the only thing that's wrong and I know you guys have a hypoxic room where you can stimulate or simulate a high altitude and Yeah, I think 22,000 feet.
00:40:39.000But isn't the way you're supposed to do it, you're supposed to work at sea level but sleep at high altitude?
00:40:44.000Isn't that how it's supposed to be done?
00:41:16.000I mean, I just think that if really high-level coaches start moving there, and obviously we just lost one of the best, Robert Foles, which is a huge, huge loss, and what a great guy.
00:41:26.000I was going to say, I mean, universally, the nicest guy ever, always a great demeanor.
00:41:31.000Very few people that are fight coaches that are universally loved, and Robert really was.
00:41:36.000But, you know, Vegas has some good coaches, but I anticipate more and more gyms moving and relocating there and bringing fighters there.
00:41:42.000Because I just think high-level fighters are going to see that place and go, how can I recreate this anywhere without fucking millions and millions of dollars?
00:42:04.000I think the other cool thing, and I know Duncan French, he's Dr. Duncan French, he's our VP of performance there, which he explained a little bit to you about, is that not only are we looking to influence the UFC athlete, but also influence positively MMA, the whole, the entire sport.
00:42:23.000And what you're seeing is UFC athletes can come in there and use it, but they can also bring along with them training partners, We're only seven or eight months into this, but what we've already seen is training ideas, proper nutrition, going back out to these gyms, not only across the U.S., but across the world.
00:42:44.000So we definitely hope to be a positive influence throughout all of MMA and really, really grow this sport.
00:43:02.000I'll go over there when I'm in the office multiple times a day just to see who's in there that day and have that five, ten-minute conversation with Wilson Hayes that he knows me going forward in the future.
00:44:08.000I know a lot of football teams are using them now, and it's starting to spread.
00:44:12.000Excellent source of magnesium, because you're absorbing it through the skin, but just for relaxation and recuperation, I would be fascinated to see if you guys had those, like, what kind of results you'd get.
00:44:23.000Yeah, I mean, it sounded to me, and I was there when you were talking about it, that Duncan was open to it and was talking about some research.
00:44:28.000I think he said Ohio State University is conducting some research on the benefits of that, so...
00:45:45.000Mental game of any athlete in any sport in the world.
00:45:50.000When you're walking out into an octagon and facing one of the baddest mixed martial artists on the planet.
00:45:58.000I know you've seen a ton of fights over your career, but I think one thing that I've seen in the two and a half years that you may not is that progression through fight week.
00:46:07.000So when I go out to these events or events are in Vegas, I'm there check-in day, Monday or Tuesday of fight week.
00:46:14.000And typically when we're on the road, I'm there every day in the same hotel.
00:46:18.000I'm watching these guys and girls eat breakfast.
00:46:20.000I'm watching them at the gym prepare, try to make weight on Friday.
00:46:23.000I'm watching them Saturday morning with the prospect of the fight ahead of them.
00:46:27.000What an incredible mental journey it is to know that you're about to get into a cage with one of the baddest fighters on the planet.
00:46:36.000And even if you win, probably come out with a little bit of damage.
00:46:56.000And you see, you know, damage on even the ones that win.
00:47:00.000And unlike other sports where you get out on the field and you warm up and you get a little sense of what the atmosphere is like, these athletes are walking out, you know, into the lion's den, seeing it for the first time.
00:47:12.000And the sensory, overwhelming sensory things that are going on when doing that and to be able to, you know, control your emotions and And, you know, compete against somebody is just absolutely the most incredible thing that I've ever seen.
00:47:28.000And, you know, very few of these fighters, and I talk to a lot of them, that doesn't get to them in some way or form.
00:47:35.000That is, you know, I talk to Forrest often about that.
00:47:37.000And Forrest says, He equates it to if you've never jumped out of an airplane, the whole time you're on the way up saying, what the hell am I doing?
00:47:46.000And then, you know, when the bell rings and you start fighting, then it kind of calms down and you're back in your kind of zone.
00:47:53.000But just what an incredible mental game this is.
00:47:57.000And I just have so much respect for our athletes because of what they have to go through and they're able to do it time and time again and control those emotions.
00:48:03.000You bring up an important point, and mental training is something that a lot of athletes have really concentrated on more over the last few years than I think ever that I could recall.
00:48:14.000And a lot of them bring in hypnotists and a lot of them bring in sports psychologists.
00:48:18.000Has there ever been any talk of bringing that to the performance institute?
00:48:21.000Yeah, I've talked briefly with Duncan about it, who has a ton of resources in the athletic performance field.
00:48:29.000So we've talked briefly about that, but nobody on the staff currently.
00:51:31.000Yeah, well he's got a mindset and that mindset is I'm coming to go to war and he said it when he got signed he said over the next couple years I'm gonna get knocked out.
00:52:28.000Maybe you're too non-emotional and you're too non-vulnerable and you're delusional in your perceptions.
00:52:34.000It's amazing seeing the different ways that different athletes deal with it.
00:52:37.000So, Saturday night, I'll give you a perfect example.
00:52:39.000So, fight night, you know, USADA's the one doing the testing.
00:52:44.000A lot of times, fight night, there's not a lot going on in my world.
00:52:47.000I'm there to put out fires in case something does go on.
00:52:50.000I like to watch the fights close, just to see those things we're talking about here.
00:52:55.000But occasionally, I'll pop in backstage just to make sure everything's going good.
00:52:59.000So, I walked back there before the Holly-Cyborg fight, Holly was out in the hallway getting ready to do that long walk for the championship bout.
00:53:11.000She was there for probably about 10 minutes, cameras getting ready, and she was doing that Holly pacing back and forth, jamming her hands together, firing herself up.
00:53:21.000She did it for a good 10 minutes back there, and then you see once she gets out in the cage, she was the first one in there, pacing back and forth for 10 minutes, right?
00:54:20.000Between the 10 minutes backstage, before she walked out, the five minutes after she was in the cage and Cyborg was walking out, the 10 or 15 seconds between every round, she probably, you know.
00:54:38.000Well, Jackson's camp, you know, that Michael, excuse me, Greg Jackson and Mike Winklejohn camp, they spend a lot of time working on endurance training and strength and conditioning.
00:55:07.000You know, like the way she's bouncing and moving, I don't think Rana can move like that.
00:55:12.000I'm like watching her bounce and move in that crazy kickboxing style that she'd had for all those years, her ability to do backflips and stuff.
00:56:35.000Yeah, the women's MMA talent level has risen.
00:56:40.000I remember when it first came on the scene and Ronda was the champ and she was just kind of steamrolling these girls who really didn't belong in the ring with her.
00:56:51.000And, you know, interesting, bringing back to the Performance Institute, you know, I talk with guys a lot over there that what they're finding out is you need to train a female athlete in a much different manner than you train a male athlete.
00:57:03.000You know, you see a lot of times when female athletes cut weight, difficulties they have cutting that weight because of, you know, menstrual cycles potentially.
00:57:12.000And you also see, in a lot of cases, a rebound effect.
00:57:16.000Where a female will fight, get down to weight, fight, and then bounce way back up and just lose the body's ability to regulate.
00:57:24.000Where they'll be cutting down on calories, working out like crazy, and they're still putting on weight.
00:57:29.000So I think that's something that you'll see the Performance Institute doing is try to figure out and then knowledgeably disseminate information about how to train the female athlete.
00:57:39.000They may need a little bit more time off in recovery between fights than a male athlete will.
00:57:45.000One thing I say time and time again is every time we have a female fight, they come to fight.
00:57:52.000And you often see cards that are, you know, kind of lagging a little bit.
00:57:55.000And you look down on the list, you're like, okay, here comes a female fight.
00:57:58.000And boom, turns the card right around.
00:58:00.000Because, you know, inevitably they give ultimate maximum effort in there.
00:58:21.000I mean, there's some very popular fighters, you know, like Rose Namajunas, obviously now is going to be one of the most popular fighters after the knockout of Ioani and Jacek.
00:58:29.000Cyborg's obviously very popular, but there's plenty of room for more.
00:58:32.000And they realize that, look, this is the time to go for it.
00:58:35.000And I just think that, you know, the women that get involved in fighting in the first place, it's not, there's a lot of men that get involved in fighting that are not going to fight after a while.
00:58:44.000But the women that get involved in fighting, they tend to be crazy.
00:59:02.000Now, Kat is an interesting example because she was telling me the exact same thing that you were saying, that with a lot of women, their body responds very poorly to the weight cut and then immediately wants to gain weight afterwards.
00:59:13.000Do you think that that's some sort of an evolutionary feature because of the fact they carry babies and they need fat, and so their body freaks out?
00:59:30.000And that's something, again, going back to the Performance Institute, that they're diving deep into.
00:59:36.000And Clint Wattenberg, especially on the nutrition side, seeing those endocrine profiles after a fight, what can you do, both in cutting back and training and through your diet to help control and regulate that.
00:59:49.000And Kat was telling me about a program that you guys were just you were just mentioning briefly in San Diego where they're using some sort of magnetic frequencies on fighters that have had brain injuries like what what is this?
01:00:03.000Yeah, well, it was something that Dr. Duncan French kind of brought into the mix here.
01:00:07.000So, previous to coming to UFC, he was Director of Sports Performance at University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.
01:00:14.000And they were looking into, you know, traumatic brain injury in football and possible therapy.
01:00:22.000And they came across a clinic in San Diego that was using this therapy, an FDA-approved device.
01:00:30.000In conjunction with that, they do some EKGs, a reading of the electrical waves in the brain.
01:00:37.000And, you know, initially we're finding that this therapy was bringing some of those readings back together.
01:00:43.000And I think very early in the process of figuring out whether this can really work or not, but certainly what the UFC wants to be is ahead of the curve in terms of potential therapies out there for treating the brain.
01:00:59.000And so, yeah, Kat's been going there for a while, and she says she's experienced some positive results.
01:01:07.000Yeah, she told me she got some outstanding results.
01:01:10.000And what's interesting is there's been a ton of research and studies done on transdermal stimulation, all these different ways to increase the brain's ability to learn.
01:01:21.000And there was a Radiolab podcast on this.
01:01:24.000I think it was called something Nine Volt.
01:01:47.000And so then they attached these electrodes to various areas of her head and stimulated her brain with a small charge, and she went through the exact same thing, and she said it felt like The 20 minutes went by in two minutes and her score was perfect.
01:02:05.000And this is being echoed throughout like many different people that have done tests on these very, and there's a lot of like home hacking where people are literally going to radio lab and making their own setups.
01:02:18.000But I'm curious to see if the UFC has looked into some of these things.
01:02:22.000Like maybe perhaps there's a way you could stimulate the body's ability to learn certain techniques or like carve pathways by stimulating areas of the brain.
01:02:33.000Yeah, man, another great reason for you to get Duncan in here, because he can talk real knowledgeably about this therapy.
01:02:39.000He told me when at the University of Notre Dame, you know, they'd have football players that would, you know, have migraine headaches for long periods of time that underwent this therapy, and in a matter of weeks, they went away.
01:02:51.000When Donna and I visited the facility down in San Diego, they talked about employees of the facility bringing in their kids A, kids that had some levels of autism that after this therapy were more engaging with people.
01:03:05.000They also talked about kids that had tests or finals coming up the day after where they go in for this therapy the night before and their test scores were improving as a result.
01:03:17.000They deal with a lot of Special Forces soldiers down in the San Diego area that have had traumatic brain injuries because of IEDs.
01:03:27.000So, I mean, I think some real exciting potential there that, again, you know, the UFC wants to be at the forefront of and, you know, be the first to, you know, to suggest some of these things to our athletes and, you know, potentially even looking, getting some of these devices at the PI and be able to treat some of our athletes there.
01:03:48.000And I think that we're in an interesting time now where because so much research is being put on CTE and traumatic brain injuries that we're looking at potential ways to mitigate those problems and maybe even rehab some of the issues that fighters are having.
01:04:04.000Yeah, so one thing we didn't show you on your tour is we now make part of the onboarding process at the PI, the C3 logic testing, which is this 25, 30 minute neurocognitive test that came out of the Cleveland Clinic brain study.
01:05:01.000So after a period of a couple years, a fighter can have access to some real objective data on what their neurocognitive capabilities are looking like.
01:05:11.000That would be a great way to find out, I mean, maybe one of the only ways to find out, without a fighter disclosing it, whether or not a fighter's been knocked out in camp.
01:05:21.000Because that's a common occurrence, that fighters get knocked out in camp in hard sparring, and then a week, two weeks later, have to fight, and their ability to take a shot is gone.
01:05:33.000Yeah, it's interesting, you know, often asked about that and comparing it to other sports leagues.
01:05:38.000And the one thing I will say, you know, with MMA, now this is excluding things that are going on in the gym, but in a fight that's regulated by an athletic commission, I think MMA has some of the most conservative return-to-play policy, I know it does, of any sport wherein if you're an NFL quarterback and you get knocked out on a Sunday, Yeah, you're in a concussion protocol, but they're trying to get you back playing probably the next Sunday or the Sunday thereafter.
01:06:24.000And here's a question about a guy like Alistair.
01:06:28.000Alistair, we looked it up one day on a podcast, has been stopped or knocked out somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 times in MMA, and then three times more in kickboxing.
01:06:41.000What's the number where you're like, that's enough?
01:06:43.000Yeah, I don't know the answer to that.
01:06:46.000I know you talk with Alistair and he's got all his wits about him.
01:06:57.000He gets knocked out and he's like, well, we go back to the drawing board and we'll be better next time.
01:07:02.000I think it's an unknown now, but you also look at, you know, the UFC has been the largest contributor to the Cleveland Clinic Fighter Brain Health Study.
01:07:08.000So we, you know, made, I think, multi-million dollar commitment.
01:07:15.000So yeah, we're looking to invest resources into finding out what those answers are, definitely, and be at the forefront of any innovative therapies that are out there, innovative, you know, testing that's out there.
01:07:39.000I've also read that scientists arguing that that, you know, that's bunk, and that's not right.
01:07:43.000So I don't know where we're at on that.
01:07:45.000Yeah, because, boy, it just seems like...
01:07:50.000And it also affects people differently, right?
01:07:53.000Depending upon what genes they have, some people are more predisposed to CTE. Yeah, and that's my understanding of it.
01:08:00.000Again, a lot of unknowns, but I think that the UFC has shown a dedication to contributing to areas where we can find out some of those answers.
01:08:10.000Yeah, I know that you guys recently had Mark Hunt come to Vegas because Mark Hunt had talked about suffering damage from fights and the UFC said, you know what, we can't just hear him say that.
01:08:23.000We're going to pull him off this card.
01:08:25.000And he was furious and they said, look, we love you.
01:09:42.000He's a guy that is almost too tough for his body, or maybe is too tough for his body.
01:09:48.000If you watch Kane fight particularly early in his career when he's in his prime, you just couldn't believe the amount of endurance that a 240 pound man can have.
01:09:57.000Just the pace that he would put on guys.
01:10:00.000And you'd see them just drowning in that pace.
01:10:05.000I mean, you have to have some physical gifts, cardiovascularly, and I think Kane will admit that he has some natural cardio, but unbelievable work ethic and mental toughness.
01:10:17.000And that mental toughness also makes you push through injuries.
01:10:20.000And pushing through injuries is how injuries become chronic, and that's how injuries become unmanageable and require surgery.
01:10:51.000I mean, if you're really injured and you have a good training partner, you can drill on certain things and say, hey man, you just can't touch my shoulder.
01:11:01.000And there's no way you can really prepare for a fight without really hard training.
01:11:06.000And hard training with injuries is virtually impossible.
01:11:11.000With some injuries, you know, I mean, some of them you can work around.
01:11:14.000There's ways to figure a way around things.
01:11:16.000And that's one of the things I found was really interesting also about the UFC Performance Institute is there's a lot of different things that you guys have devised or have, you know, you guys have brought in and implemented that other people have devised to help people with injuries that are trying to still train hard, like that gravity treadmill thing.
01:11:36.000So you strap that around you and you're getting, you know, I don't know what the ratio is to...
01:11:41.000You know if you're true weight to what you know type of stress you're putting on your body But it's much less than going out and running on a regular treadmill on the street You also have the underwater treadmill which you saw.
01:11:55.000It's like it's like it just seems like the floor is moving you got to try to keep up with it.
01:12:00.000You know basically it's a rising floor so you rise up to the top you step on it and then it drops down and it works like a regular treadmill because you're but because you're underwater You're putting less stress on, obviously, your lower extremities.
01:12:13.000If you notice also, there's cameras underwater with a TV screen right in front of the person using it.
01:12:20.000The idea there is if you have an ankle injury or a knee injury, you can take a look at how your foot's coming down and are you favoring it and what's your gait looking like.
01:12:29.000It's a really cool piece of equipment.
01:12:31.000Connor was using that quite a bit in the run-up to Floyd.
01:12:34.000He put a lot of stuff out there on social media on that thing.
01:13:04.000Now, look, if you're coming off an ACL surgery and you're taking baby steps to get back to running, it's probably there.
01:13:11.000Otherwise, if you're healthy and training for a fight coming up in a couple weeks, I don't know if that's necessarily a piece of equipment for you.
01:13:19.000He's a guy that I'm puzzled by Connor.
01:13:22.000Obviously, I'm a gigantic fan, but man, his cardio, it seems like there's a thing there.
01:13:28.000Whether it's the style that he fights, the explosive sprinting style that he fights is unsustainable, you know, or whether or not there seems to be some sort of an issue that needs to be addressed.
01:13:39.000Some much more radical approach to strength and conditioning.
01:13:42.000And I would love to see the guys at the Performance Institute try to tackle that and try to figure out, I mean, I'm sure they've run VO2 maxes on them and But he gets tired.
01:13:51.000He did most of his camp there, but he had his own team around him that was kind of directing him.
01:13:56.000But in his defense, this was a very quick camp.
01:14:06.000I'll tell you one of the incredible things about that, and there wasn't a lot said about it going back to kind of my world, the anti-doping world.
01:14:12.000So Floyd does this for all his fights.
01:14:14.000He basically hires USADA to do testing.
01:14:19.000It's not the same as a UFC program where you're subject to testing year-round.
01:14:24.000In boxing, once the fight is made, USADA then comes in and does collecting.
01:14:29.000So it depends on how far out the fight was made.
01:14:31.000But Conor and Floyd signed that contract, was it seven weeks out maybe?
01:14:36.000They were each tested 16 times in that seven weeks.
01:14:40.000And I guarantee you, they are the two most tested athletes in that year.
01:14:44.000Pure short period of time ever in the history of anti-doping.
01:14:48.000So not only was it an incredibly cool event, but I think incredibly cool and clean for the fans to know how out of the way those two guys went to ensure that that fight was fair and clean.
01:15:00.000They don't get enough credit for that.
01:15:02.000It's too bad there's not two performance institutes.
01:15:04.000You could have one right next to each other where opponents could train.
01:15:08.000You could film things at the performance institute at a level.
01:15:14.000Forrest Griffin was showing me how the octagon is set up with 360-degree cameras, and you could literally film and then rotate angles up, down.
01:15:41.000When Forrest was showing me how you can move it around, I was like, this is insane.
01:15:47.000What a tool this is for technique development.
01:15:50.000It really, and I think we're at the infancy of these coaches coming in and figuring out how they can use these things to the extent that they can benefit their fighters.
01:16:13.000So what Forrest was showing me was how they can pause it in slow-mo and back it up and then change angles and that all the fighters sparring sessions are filmed.
01:16:24.000They're filmed from an overhead, they're filmed from the sides, and there's cameras all around the octagon.
01:16:30.000I mean, it's just what a facility, man.
01:16:33.000Yeah, I mean, I really think, and we talked about this, this is bringing this sport to a whole new level.
01:17:17.000But if I was Stipe, I would not want to be doing strength and conditioning and then in between sets, just like have your ear and you hear...
01:17:27.000And Francis is hitting the heavy bag and scaring everybody.
01:18:00.000I thought you were hitting pretty hard.
01:18:01.000What did you register, like a 35,000 or a 40,000?
01:18:03.000I got 46 was my hardest one until I hurt my hand.
01:18:08.000You've got to put gloves on to do that, too.
01:18:10.000I would imagine that being wrapped up...
01:18:12.000And that's an argument that I've had many times when it comes to MMA in general.
01:18:16.000I like how you can angle it so you can throw an uppercut as well.
01:18:20.000That's an argument that I've had for MMA in general.
01:18:24.000I think it's weird that we are allowed to elbow with no pad, knee with no pad, kick with no pad on the shin, but the knuckles are protected.
01:19:15.000It seems barbaric to people to fight bare knuckle.
01:19:19.000Which to me is kind of crazy because you're kicking, like you're shinning people in the head.
01:19:24.000Like I don't understand, like we have this weird sort of childish view of like what should and shouldn't be legal.
01:19:31.000Elbows are some of the hardest, I mean you can just do that with an elbow and it doesn't hurt at all.
01:19:36.000You know, your knees, your shins, those guys that spar Muay Thai for years and years, their shins develop calcification all over the top where they can kick baseball bats.
01:21:27.000I mean, now you can take away with the new unified rules, which, ironically enough, aren't unified.
01:21:32.000So we go from commission to commission, and, you know, a fighter...
01:21:37.000We have to inform them, fight week, hey, what are the rules here?
01:21:40.000That's so unfair to these fighters that are training and developing that instinct to some of these rules.
01:21:47.000But anyway, the new unified rules, which aren't unified, anybody who's extending the fingers, if the referee has to warn them first, but if they continue to do that, a point can be taken away.
01:21:56.000I think they should take a point every time a guy gets poked in the eye.
01:21:59.000My thought process is, even if it's unintentional, the damage has been done.
01:22:04.000And if you can see it on the replay, legitimate eye poke, and you see the guy wincing, which we've seen many, many times, that guy's compromised.
01:22:11.000And I think that it's only fair that a point be taken away, even if it was unintentional.
01:22:16.000It's like kicking or kneeing a down fighter, too.
01:22:19.000You have to show intent to take a point away.
01:22:22.000How is the referee going to get in the head of a fighter to say whether or not that was intentional or not?
01:22:27.000It should almost be, I think, that if it's done, a point's taken away.
01:24:18.000The UFC follows the WADA rules, World Anti-Doping Agency, kind of sets the world standard.
01:24:24.000They have scientists that study these drugs and determine, A, is something performance-enhancing, B, is it a health and safety issue?
01:24:32.000And over the last couple years, they raised the marijuana threshold, used to be 15 nanograms per milliliter, now must exceed 150 nanograms per milliliter.
01:24:42.000Which, everybody metabolizes differently, but, you know, from scientists that I've talked about, the ingestion of marijuana, THC, the psychoactive ingredient, has to be pretty damn close to that collection in order to exceed 150 nanograms per milliliter.
01:24:57.000Which means you literally almost have to be high the day of.
01:25:01.000So if an athlete just takes a day or two off, they're most likely cleaned.
01:25:06.000I suggest longer than that, just because you never know how different people metabolize things differently as you're cutting weight, whether you're releasing some from your fat cells.
01:25:17.000The reality is it could be a lot closer than that.
01:25:19.000We're running into several athletic commissions, Texas being one, New York being another.
01:25:25.000We had probably the most extreme one last month in Michigan that have lower thresholds.
01:25:32.000Texas and New York have 35 or 50. Michigan, where we just came from, has a no tolerance policy for marijuana.
01:25:43.000So any measurable amount of THC would cause a positive test.
01:25:48.000And we lobbied them hard in anticipation of our event there saying, do you realize what this means?
01:25:54.000I mean, a fighter could walk through a cloud of secondhand smoke.
01:25:58.000You know, on the way to weigh in or a fight, and it's going to show up a measurable amount, and you're going to, that fighter could win a championship on that, and then you're going to take that championship away and overturn the win.
01:26:09.000We had in Texas a couple wins overturned for thresholds, which I think were a little bit, I think 35, it's either 35 or 50 was there, but they were slightly over that, well under the, you know, established world standard.
01:26:21.000And, man, I think these athletic commissions got to take a serious look at, you know, bringing those into uniformity.
01:26:27.000You have, you know, in the U.S., you have certain states now where it's legal medically and recreationally, but, you know, arguably federally still illegal.
01:26:36.000But you have some countries where it's completely legal, and you have doctors prescribing this for, you know, pain control or stress or anxiety.
01:26:46.000And, you know, A commission like Michigan, one of those fighters from one of those countries that is completely legally doing it under the care of a doctor, and in lieu of doing a synthetic drug like an opioid or a Xanax or something like that, sense would tell you it's much healthier and safer to do that.
01:27:07.000You know, you're setting up this barrier that, you know, could negatively affect a fighter's career if they have any discernible amount in their system.
01:27:15.000And, you know, not only from the unified rules, but from an anti-doping marijuana's perspective to these commissions have got to come together and, you know, realize what the white thing to do is and stop, you know, in a lot of instances, stop governing or policing just because you Yeah.
01:27:32.000We ran into that with the whole Courtney Casey thing in Texas.
01:27:36.000I don't know if you're familiar with that.
01:28:40.000Yeah, so TET is testosterone, E is epitestosterone.
01:28:45.000And every human being, male and female, have, on average, a one-to-one ratio naturally occurring in them.
01:28:52.000And if you take anabolic steroids, it can have a tendency to raise that ratio, where the T becomes higher than the E. However, what anti-doping has found out and evolved into the last few years, that especially mildly elevated ratios, sometimes there are natural reasons for that happening.
01:29:12.000Especially in females, especially females on birth control, which is, you know, a legal medication.
01:29:20.000And so what you do now in anti-doping, when you have an elevated TE ratio, you go to a backup test.
01:29:26.000And that backup test is called an isotope ratio mass spectrometry or ERM's test.
01:29:31.000And that reads the carbon atom in the testosterone in a sample to determine whether or not it's plant-based, which would mean a synthetic, or it's naturally occurring.
01:29:40.000Because testosterone is synthesized through wild yams, right?
01:29:44.000So that's how they find out it's plant-based?
01:30:16.000And really thereafter, it was radio silence.
01:30:19.000So we were working with Courtney, worked with USADA closely, and USADA stepped in and said, absolutely, that is wrong.
01:30:27.000We're going to go back and look at her biological profile, and we'll share that with Texas.
01:30:31.000We'll take a look at these TE readings over the time of the samples that she submitted.
01:30:36.000Sure enough, most of the samples were mildly elevated, and sure enough, USADA did the right thing, and they went and did that backup testing, and every time they did it, she was negative.
01:30:46.000So they reached out to Texas, said, hey, we'll share this information with you, and in our historical records, this girl does have a naturally occurring, mildly elevated TE ratio.
01:30:57.000Then went through a several-week process of figuring out, hey, is there some of that sample remaining?
01:31:02.000Because if there is Texas, you have an obligation to go ahead and do this backup testing on it.
01:31:09.000Took them a number of weeks where poor Courtney was in limbo.
01:31:13.000And finally, Dana put them on blast, basically said, Texas Commission, you know, get your shit together.
01:31:21.000And we got a hold of that remaining sample, her B sample, had it tested at a WADA laboratory and was negative on the IRMS. How crazy is it that putting someone on blast works?
01:31:35.000That's just no it's it's an ego thing like you people are bitching at you You're gonna succumb to that but yeah sometimes that's what it takes to get someone to do the right thing It does so so this poor girl is living with the fact that she's labeled as a cheater for two to three months talked about It's one of those things like once someone says you're a steroid cheater Probably always.
01:31:56.000She lives on Maui, so small community.
01:31:59.000She talked about going to the store and people pointing at her and talking bad about her.
01:32:04.000She's a coach in a gym there, coaches kids, about parents not wanting her to coach their kids when this was in limbo.
01:32:11.000And how many of those people heard that she was exonerated?
01:32:13.000Headlines on page one, retraction on the back page, right?
01:32:41.000I mean, but that's, again, going back to the mental game, a tremendous amount of stress to carry with yourself through, you know, these last six or so months.
01:32:48.000Well, I hope she gets past that because she's a lot of fun.
01:32:52.000And I got to tell you, man, it's one of the most satisfying things.
01:32:55.000Again, going back to the golden snitch thing, really my role here is an advocate for Someone who looks out for athletes in situations like that.
01:33:06.000When we put this program together, the USADA program, it's unprecedented.
01:33:12.000There's no other professional sport that has the comprehensiveness of the program.
01:33:16.000There's also no other professional sport that's quite put together like the UFC is.
01:33:21.000In terms of you have individual athletes that are competing against each other.
01:33:26.000It's not a team sport where if one person tests positive, you have another person to step on in.
01:33:31.000So a lot of what I've done over those first, you know, couple years is take a look at, you know, hey, we took what we think was a pretty good shot at the rules to begin with, but look and see how those rules played themselves out as time went on.
01:33:43.000And after about a year and a half, there were a couple instances where I saw, hey, this isn't quite fair to an athlete.
01:33:50.000So after a year and a half, there was a couple rules that we changed.
01:33:53.000The first one, there's kind of a funny story behind this, too, was, I don't know if you remember when Nate fought Connor, I think the second time, He goes to the press conference after and takes out a vape pen.
01:34:05.000And someone asked him what he was doing, and he said he was CBD. And at the time, the rule was the in-competition period where CBD was prohibited lasted until four hours after the conclusion of the fight, and he was clearly within that time period.
01:34:23.000So USADA contacted me and said, hey, technically Nate was in violation of this.
01:34:28.000And I said, hey, look, this was not the intent of the rule.
01:34:32.000They never indicated that they were going to sanction him, but I made it clear.
01:34:36.000Let's explain CBD for anybody that might not know what we're talking about.
01:35:13.000Yeah, again, comparing to, you know, a natural plant-derived product versus a synthetic, you know, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, Advils, Tylenols can be toxic on you.
01:35:23.000Probably common sense would, you know, in addition to science, would say that CBD is maybe a little bit healthier for you.
01:35:30.000Nevertheless, it was prohibited in competition.
01:36:04.000But we identified a problem with the rules in that when Nate finished that fight with Connor, USADA came to the post-fight medical tent and said, Nate, we need to make a collection from you.
01:36:15.000And I don't know whether it was blood or urine, but they got a sample from him.
01:36:19.000He then went to the press conference after and took the CBD. What I said is, look, you can't punish him.
01:36:26.000You have the sample that shows what was in his system.
01:36:29.000Yes, CBD was prohibited in competition, but you have a sample to show whether or not he was using it.
01:36:34.000It's clear that he was using it after the fight.
01:36:37.000We just put those extra four hours in there.
01:36:39.000With the thought of if a fighter finishes a fight and somehow USADA is not able to get to him, say gets in the ambulance right away, goes to the hospital, you increase that window just in case they can't get them.
01:36:50.000Come to find out as we started putting this program together, USADA can always get to that fighter after.
01:36:55.000If they're transported, they can hop in.
01:36:58.000It wasn't an issue where we needed those extra four months.
01:37:03.000And now, basically, the rule is the in-competition period ends with a collection immediately after the fight, or USADA has a reasonable amount of time after the fight.
01:37:14.000So the funny thing is, after we change this rule, Nate and Nick Diaz come to a fight and they're sitting, call it the Zufa section, you know, kind of Dana's section right there behind Dana's table.
01:38:49.000I mean, I've sat down with him over the last couple months and talking about trying to resolve this whereabouts issue.
01:38:54.000I mean, the unfortunate thing there is, look, the whereabouts failure sanctions are meant to catch people that are cheating and trying to avoid testing.
01:39:01.000And I just think Nick's lifestyle led to those three kind of whereabouts, not that he was trying to avoid testing.
01:39:14.000He trusted certain individuals to do his whereabouts for him, I think is what happened over time, and those individuals would come in and out of his life, and it's kind of unbeknownst to him that he was missing a lot of these things.
01:39:25.000Nevertheless, again, there's strict liability here, and he's currently under sanction, but we're hoping to resolve that pretty quick.
01:39:32.000Now, last time you were on, you talked about this new potential testosterone that was derived from animals and that there might be a way that people could take this stuff and go undetected.
01:39:47.000Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard much about that since then.
01:39:55.000But, you know, again, some of the things to combat that are the biological passport program where you're looking over time at somebody's TE ratio.
01:40:05.000And even though that, you know, won't trigger a positive on the isotope ratio mass spectrometry, if you see wild variances in TE ratios over time, that could potentially trigger...
01:40:18.000Sorry, would there be a way to mitigate that biological passport thing by making a specific time that you inject it every day and doing it on a regular basis?
01:40:30.000I know it was one of the ways that some fighters have gotten caught is that they knew they were going to be in Vegas or something for a long period of time, so they maybe would take it twice a week, so they doubled their dose and took it in one shot, and then they got hit with a random.
01:40:45.000And then it showed that they had this massive testosterone spike.
01:40:49.000I mean, you know, someone who has the resources and sophisticated and somebody has someone who's educated in chemistry, it's definitely a cat and mouse game, anti-doping.
01:40:59.000And, you know, Fogle talked about that when he was on here.
01:41:02.000I mean, the premise of Icarus initially was, right, he was going to show that anti-doping doesn't work.
01:41:09.000And it was actually something I was, I watched your podcast with him and watched the movie as well.
01:41:14.000And initially I was a little bit turned off on that premise because he gave, he gave the examples of Armstrong, Marion Jones, he said, look, anti-doping just doesn't work and I'm going to go out and prove that.
01:41:24.000Well, that doesn't make any sense if both those people got busted.
01:41:44.000You know, drug testing is a necessity.
01:41:46.000You need to have that, but you also need to have a strong investigative element.
01:41:50.000You have to liaison and USADA does this with law enforcement throughout the world so that if you can't catch somebody because they're sophisticated in the techniques they're using, you know, maybe you catch them through, you know, informants or other investigative resources.
01:42:16.000And the documentary, the premise was he was a guy who was a cyclist and decided to compete in a race, first clean, and then come back and do it again under the assistance of a guy who is an expert in anti-doping that showed him, like, what's the stuff that you should take?
01:42:38.000And during this time period, it's discovered that the entire Soviet Olympic team is on steroids and that they cheated during the games at Sochi.
01:42:50.000And he explains how they did it, and then the investigation comes down, and the guy has to flee Russia, and then he comes to America, he goes under protective custody, and Brian Fogle just...
01:43:00.000You talk about like just stepping in shit.
01:43:05.000He did an awesome job of telling the story and this Gregory guy making him kind of the sympathetic character, yet he was the kind of the evil villain that was doing all this over in Russia.
01:43:17.000The one thing that he didn't cover too much in the movie, I was a little bit disappointed is who really the true heroes were of that whole thing.
01:43:24.000So there was a husband and wife couple, Vitaly and Yulia Stepnova.
01:43:30.000And Yulia was an 800-meter runner for Russia.
01:43:34.000And Vitaly actually worked for Rosada, the Russian anti-doping organization, as a drug collecting officer.
01:43:41.000And they were the ones, basically, that caused this German documentary to come out exposing what Gregory was doing.
01:43:50.000And then at that point in time, the heat came on Gregory because this information was out there and he was either forced to stay there and likely be arrested and put the blame on or flee to the US. It was dealt with very briefly in that movie, but those two, I think, the true heroes because you know they just did this because it was the right thing to do um gregory did it you know obviously with a lot of self-preservation in mind and that he had one of two choices
01:44:16.000uh either take off and come clean or stay there and face the consequences but nevertheless man fogel did i thought an awesome job in that movie it's just an incredible incredible And it's really tough, I'm sure, for Olympic athletes to say, God, man, this is what we're up against when you're talking about state-sponsored doping and the KGB being involved.
01:44:38.000There's almost a sense of hopelessness out there that, you know, how am I ever know that as a clean athlete, my rights are going to be protected?
01:44:45.000But again, going back to what we're doing with the UFC, the beauty of what we're doing is you never see that because you have an independent authority, USADA, who's operating and administering our program.
01:44:58.000So unlike the Russian government, where they have interests of Russian athletes doing well and winning gold medals, USADA could, in a sense, give a crap about who's being caught and who isn't.
01:45:14.000So one of the things that came up in the film that was really disturbing was the collusion between WADA and the IOC and that they really it was in their best interest to not sanction Russia.
01:45:24.000Yeah, you have people sitting, you still do, on the WADA board and on the IOC board.
01:45:31.000WADA is going to come in and say, hey...
01:45:34.000This was clearly state-sponsored doping.
01:45:36.000We're going to exclude Russia from the Olympics for the next however many years.
01:45:41.000Well, that's a hit to the IOC because IOC is getting money from these television networks putting on the games in Seoul or in Tokyo coming up.
01:45:50.000So, you know, a conflict of interest there.
01:46:45.000Did you see if you could find out what they banned?
01:46:47.000They were gonna ban the entire team, but the outrage from that was just so strong, and then they realized the economic impact of that would be literally in the billions of dollars.
01:46:56.000I think they banned the track and field team from Rio games, which is pretty significant, track and field being a pretty big Olympic sport.
01:48:11.000They might not have had a country to perform, or their whole country might not have sent them, but they were going to have to qualify or something.
01:48:38.000Again, there's no denying it's a cat-and-mouse game going on out there, but a deterrent is that it's not all of them, but certain samples can be frozen up to 10 years, and as new tests come online, like the long-term metabolite test that Gregory developed after five or six years, they may go back and retest those samples.
01:48:58.000When we go out and educate our athletes, I tell them, look, maybe you're not in the UFC anymore, but your legacy is around forever, and that's a smear to your legacy forever.
01:50:24.000And I know when they get out into the real world and that work environment, there's nothing they can't handle because they've already handled it in sports.
01:50:31.000They've run up against a coach who's an asshole.
01:50:33.000They've run up against teammates that are selfish.
01:50:36.000Great occurrences when they've worked well as a team.
01:50:39.000All of that is going to come into play to help them in their lives.
01:50:43.000And when you introduce something and something is so pure and good that's breaking the rules that short-term, mostly long-term, is not healthy for you.
01:50:53.000Sports is about to be healthy for you.
01:50:55.000And at some level, especially the way these performance enhancing drugs are used, they're not really being used in a healthy environment.
01:51:01.000Healthy manner and So yeah, but I feel I feel very strongly and very positive about what we're doing in the role that I'm playing here Well, it's interesting that the UFC unlike a lot of sports the the history is pretty transparent and the history of doping is also pretty transparent like everybody's really aware of What the Wild West days were like?
01:51:20.000I mean, it's every people talk about they laugh about it It's it's sort of an it's not a secret at all in particular as we were saying about pride but You know, I think that ultimately what sports should be about, it should be about effort, skill, determination, focus, discipline.
01:51:39.000And those are the lessons that you can pass on.
01:51:40.000Not who has the best pharmacist, not who has the best team of scientists that can hide the results better.
01:51:46.000And that's one of the more disturbing things about Icarus or any of these other things that have shown that You know, there's systematic anti-doping or doping or state-sponsored doping.
01:51:59.000It's just, it distorts the whole thing, like what a victory is or why.
01:52:04.000You've got some athletes that probably would have won anyway.
01:52:06.000If everybody was clean, they might have been the best athlete anyway, and they could have won.
01:52:11.000Floyd Landis told me that all the time about Lance.
01:52:14.000He said, that dude was the baddest-ass bicycle rider ever and take away all the drugs that were taken in the sport.
01:52:21.000He would have been the best writer ever.
01:52:23.000He had something going on there, but the reality was everybody was using something.
01:52:29.000I think I talked about this last time, but I really, you know, people are surprised to hear this, but I had a lot of compassion and understanding for a lot of these dopers after they told me their stories.
01:52:38.000I mean, You're a young kid, a vulnerable kid that wasn't really worldly, that all your teenage life you aspire to go over to Europe and get on a bike and compete in these awesome races, and all of a sudden you're over there, dropped off, and a coach sits you in a room and says, You want to stay here, kid?
01:53:09.000Yeah, I mean, I would love to have a podcast with you and Lance sit down together and discuss this now that the dust has kind of settled and, you know, he's been pretty open about it and transparent about the whole process himself.
01:53:19.000Yeah, I mean, I think the difference that he has with everybody else is, you know, again, this is back to Fogle's contention that they didn't catch Lance.
01:53:29.000As you look back at his history, and they did actually.
01:53:32.000In 99, I think he had a corticosteroid positive.
01:53:34.000In 2001, I think he had a test that showed high likelihood of EPO use that wasn't followed on.
01:53:42.000But what he did is he became very powerful in the sport, and the International Cycling Union was corrupt and basically used that power and wielded it, and they covered up a lot of those tests.
01:54:17.000Now, let's get into, we briefly touched on weight cutting, but I know that the UFC has recognized that there's a real issue, and what steps have we taken to try to mitigate the problems that are caused by weight cutting?
01:54:34.000And another one of the reasons why I love the Performance Institute and the staff that we have there, and that before them, it really stemmed from the USADA program, where under the WADA code, you ban the use of IVs.
01:54:46.000And so, because I was kind of the point person, obviously.
01:54:53.000They were using IVs to basically flush their system of drugs to manipulate their biological passport.
01:55:00.000So if they're blood doping or using EPO, it would have a tendency to lower those and normalize those biological passport levels.
01:55:09.000And so WADA learned that through some of the investigations that were conducted and determined that IV use in excess of 50 milliliters every six hours would be prohibited.
01:55:21.000So when we announced that we were adopting the water prohibited list and prohibited methods, there was some blowback within the UFC community saying, hey, these things are used regularly because fighters are pushing themselves to the edge to make weight.
01:55:36.000And do you understand what you're doing here?
01:55:37.000You're going to put fighters in unsafe positions where they're going to get in and not be rehydrated.
01:55:43.000So we took a look at that and spoke with USAID and said, hey, you know, maybe we should, you know, slowly roll out the IV ban.
01:55:51.000So we actually delayed that by three months.
01:55:53.000The program went into effect July 1st and we instituted the IV ban October 1st.
01:55:59.000So we had three months of getting fighters prepared for it, educating them why that they were banned.
01:56:06.000Nevertheless, I mean, Real quickly, the whole weight cutting issue came kind of into my plate.
01:56:12.000And while I wasn't an expert in it, I had to get out and talk to a lot of fighters, camps, coaches about IVs and give them alternatives to rehydrating the right way.
01:56:24.000I, again, being an expert myself, I reached out to what I found were experts in the world.
01:56:29.000A certain guy by the name of Dr. Robert Kenefik, who is a PhD exercise physiologist, works at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, studies environmental effects on soldiers, his expertise being dehydration.
01:56:44.000So soldiers in the Middle East that are marching for hours, days upon a time, run out of water, How do we get these soldiers back rehydrated and back into the fight?
01:56:57.000And thought, hey, this is the type of expert that we need to talk to.
01:57:00.000Extreme dehydration, not some kid that has diarrhea and is mildly dehydrated with some Pedialyte.
01:57:07.000So we brought him in, had him actually the week of UFC 200. He was in town, got a chance to talk to a lot of the fighters coming in and analyze the messes they were using.
01:57:19.000He recommended to us, hey, here's the maximum amount of weight fighters that you should recommend.
01:57:27.000And that's how we came up with our weight guideline of 8%.
01:57:30.000So we recommend when those fighters check in Tuesday, For a Saturday fight, they're within 8% of their goal weight, usually on Friday.
01:57:39.000Not a requirement, a recommendation, but we put that out there and educated heavily on that.
01:57:46.000Since then, you talked I think last week about Andy Foster, the Executive Director of California, who's really taken the lead in terms of commissions on combating dangerous weight-cutting.
01:57:56.000He worked with us pretty closely on developing his 10-point weight cutting plan or plan to combat serious weight cutting.
01:58:05.000Includes his commission making calls to fighters on the card 30 days out, 10 days out, making them a little bit more accountable.
01:58:15.000He's also got a provision where fight night, he takes the fighter's weight, weighs them, and their recommendation is you only put on 10% of your weight back on, plus a pound.
01:58:26.000If they're over that, California can recommend the fighter move up a weight class.
01:58:31.000So really, yeah, just a lot of education, recommendations.
01:58:35.000And I hear a lot of people talk about, and I'm curious for your thoughts on this, Hey, we can stop this instantaneously.
01:58:44.000If you lose this much weight or put this much weight back on, you're suspended for 6 months, 12 months, whatever.
01:58:50.000We're just not going to let you fight.
01:58:52.000My concern there is when you have absolute rules, Fighters gonna do everything possible to make weight.
01:59:01.000Say you had a rule that if you miss weight, you can't fight again for 12 months, you have to move up a weight class.
01:59:06.000Fighters gonna kill themselves to make weight.
01:59:08.000My fear would be that you put an absolute rule out there and someone get hurts because of the rule that you put in place.
01:59:15.000Which is, hey, you know, I think it's a measured approach.
01:59:17.000You have to continually reevaluate it.
01:59:19.000But I think right now, the rules that are out there between our recommendations, California's rules are more guideline recommendations.
01:59:26.000And then that, in conjunction with what we're doing at the Performance Institute, where, I mean, you saw last week, there is no excuse.
01:59:35.000If you have issues making weight or you're not sure where your weight class is at, you have every resource available, the best in the world to you, to come in and find that out, to be given a plan on how to safely make weight.
01:59:49.000So, you know, it's a multi-million dollar investment that the UFC has put, I think, toward that problem.
01:59:55.000And, you know, hey, maybe two, three years from now we say, Hey, that was with good intentions, but not enough.
02:00:46.000Three different times leading up to the fight.
02:00:48.000I don't know the exact protocol, but what they've done is essentially made it so that you can't be dehydrated.
02:00:52.000Like, you can't, when you weigh in, you have to weigh in at a, you know, like, if you're fighting at 170, but, you know, you get on the scale and you're fucking dying.
02:01:01.000Like, they're like, no, you're not really 170. And that's really where it should be.
02:01:05.000This idea that the best way to fight is to cheat and to drain all yourself of fluids and then pretend that you're 160 pounds and then get back on the scale, you know, 15 hours later at 185, that's fucking crazy.
02:01:29.000You know, I talk with Forrest a lot about this because he went through it.
02:01:32.000And again, why he's such, you know, a great asset to the company.
02:01:37.000But he says, look, there's certain guys and girls that have genetic ability.
02:01:43.000That carry, you know, that have good muscle mass usually, that just carry a ton of water, and it's not difficult, it's not dangerous for them to drop 10 or 15 pounds.
02:01:53.000It's not, but it would be if they fought 15 pounds under.
02:01:56.000See, if they're fighting at 170 pounds, they really weigh 185. And if they cut down to 170, they make that weight, and then fought right then.
02:02:34.000We're two equally skillful individuals trying to figure out who's got the best strategy and who's got the best will and technique.
02:02:41.000It's not supposed to be about who can do this legal cheating thing best.
02:02:46.000Because that's what weight cutting is.
02:02:48.000Well, you know, really the modern history of the UFC and the reason I think it's so successful is Lorenzo and Dana ran toward regulation, right?
02:03:29.000I know California does some hydration testing fight night, but what Bob told me is I have the most experienced ringside physicians in the world that have seen more combat sports events than everywhere.
02:03:39.000I'm comfortable that these guys are evaluating, these medical professionals are evaluating these fighters in this scenario, and if they feel or see something's not safe for that fighter to compete the next night, that they'll call them off.
02:03:51.000I think that's wonderful, but I think all that does is keep fighters from getting to the point of death.
02:03:56.000I mean, getting to the point where they're sick and terrible.
02:04:38.000So that in and of itself, just making a weight class, I don't think solves the problem.
02:04:43.000Yeah, but she's also relatively inexperienced, young to the sport, and this is a brand new weight class that they really didn't have.
02:04:50.000I'm not saying more weight classes wouldn't help, but they're not going to help by themselves.
02:04:54.000It's got to be a multiple-prong attack.
02:04:57.000I think the hydration test should be along with that.
02:05:00.000The hydration test and weight classes every 10 pounds.
02:05:03.000And then give the champion the benefit of the doubt.
02:05:05.000Whoever is a champ in each division, whatever weight class, we find out what they really weigh and they have an opportunity to fight for the title in that weight class.
02:05:17.000Yeah, I think we talked about it when you toured through the PI, but we have on a couple of occasions used that bioelectrical impedance machine to determine, is that the proper term?
02:05:39.000We're not sure exactly what the numbers look like, but that's something that, you know, we're looking into.
02:05:44.000Clint also does a lot of specific gravity testing fight week on fighters where, you know, it'll be a Tuesday or Wednesday.
02:05:50.000And I think he showed you that, that chart.
02:05:53.000He'll look at how much weight a fighter has to lose and then look at what their specific gravity reading is, how diluted or concentrated the urine is.
02:06:01.000And, you know, if he sees someone with a bunch of weight to lose that is, you know, relatively dehydrated, specific gravity wise, then, you know, can alter their plans.
02:06:10.000So yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of, a lot of that stuff going on.
02:06:15.000Disagree with you that more needs to be done, but right now our plan of attack is to use these resources, use the facility of the PI. You know, in an ideal world, I think rather than making these absolute rules, trying to educate our fighters, trying to show them.
02:06:45.000Where they start listening, and I think this is where the Performance Institute comes into play, when you start talking about the effect on your performance.
02:06:52.000So if you tell them, hey, look, if you can come to your proper weight in a more measured approach and not lose a whole bunch and put that...
02:07:03.000Look at the difference it's going to make on your performance, 24 to 30. Yeah.
02:07:19.000I also think, now it's interesting, there's, you know, on one side of it, the criticism will be, well, you're just encouraging even greater weight cuts and regains.
02:07:26.000But I think this morning weigh-in thing that we've put together, I think has had a positive impact in a couple of areas.
02:07:34.000Explain that for people who don't know what we're talking about.
02:07:36.000Yeah, so actually, Andy Foster, again, California, before UFC 199, came to me and said, hey, we've been doing this morning weigh-in for a couple regional, local shows.
02:07:49.000We do it, you know, we'd open the scales from 9am to 11am, and the idea would be a fighter gets on weight in their hotel room upstairs, hops on the elevator, steps on the scale, they make weight, they can start eating and drinking again right away.
02:08:08.000With the idea of, I think, one of the dangers of weight cutting and being dehydrated is the amount of time that you're at a loss of that water.
02:08:16.000And in the past, when we'd have the weigh-ins at an arena, it would be the fighter would have to check in downstairs.
02:08:23.000Say we had the weigh-ins at 4 o'clock in an arena.
02:08:25.000The fighter would check in downstairs at maybe 2 p.m.
02:08:32.000I remember in Rio, we were one time on a bus for an hour, hour and a half to the arena.
02:08:36.000Everybody's depleted and dehydrated on the bus ride.
02:08:39.000You step on a scale in a cold, environmentally unfriendly arena.
02:08:45.000You then get back on the bus, drive another hour, hour and a half.
02:08:48.000You're talking multiple hours where these fighters are in a depleted state.
02:08:52.000So I think the morning weigh-in protects against that.
02:08:54.000I think the other benefit we've seen out of it, and I think it's more of a long-term than a short-term benefit, is we've seen a lot more fighters missing weight since we went to the morning weigh-ins.
02:09:03.000And I think that's a product of timing.
02:09:06.000In the past, you had four or five in the afternoon, you had all day long to cut weight.
02:09:11.000And you would see fighters at 10 or 11 say, I can't do any more.
02:09:15.000And at 1 or 2 o'clock, they say, no, I can do a couple more pounds and just all day long.
02:09:19.000Now, unless you're literally not sleeping the night before you fight, you have a shorter window in the morning to do that.
02:09:25.000And I think a lot of those missed weights has helped identify those fighters that I'm probably in the wrong weight class.
02:09:31.000If I can't make that weight of waking up, you know, 5 or 6 in the morning in a couple hours, then it's probably too much weight to lose.
02:09:37.000And we've seen some fighters move up in weight class because of that.
02:09:40.000We've also seen some fighters that have decided, hey, I've got to take this more professionally and hire a nutritionist like Khabib, Khabib Nurmagomedov, who made weight easily for his last fight.
02:09:50.000And the fight before that obviously fell out of the fight because his body shut down and he had to go to the hospital to be rehydrated.
02:09:57.000Yeah, I mean, again, I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all solution.
02:10:16.000So it can be done, and again, that reverts back to the Performance Institute, I think.
02:10:20.000There's no excuse now that if you're a new fighter, and you're not making a hell of a lot of money, and don't have the resources to hire, you know, George Lockhart, whoever.
02:10:29.000you know have clint wattenberg who's an ivy league educated sports dietitian that can provide you all that remotely if you can't get to vegas he'll give you a full plan over you know over the phone over email um if you can get to vegas not only will clint plan things out for you but you have a kitchen and cooks and staff that'll provide you that meal throughout your whole fight camp that's you want to be there for free so amazing The place is incredible.
02:10:56.000And we will have Clint and Duncan on the podcast explain all that.
02:11:05.000So one of the things that we want to do with this program, again, is, you know, first and foremost, it's to protect the UFC athlete, protect the rights to clean athletes.
02:11:33.000I was actually at a conference mid-summer back in New York and sat on a panel with Major League Baseball PGA Tour and the UFC and a bunch of anti-doping scientists there and they were talking about this technology and the other leagues were asked, hey, you guys going to institute that?
02:12:18.000Until this came out, basically any blood tests done from our athlete had to be done with a phlebotomist, the full-on needle in the vein, take out a vial of blood.
02:12:29.000So with this leaching device, it's got 30 microneedles in it, the size of about an eyelash.
02:12:38.000You hit this button, and painlessly, the microneedles reach into just the capillary, so just the blood at the top of the skin, and draw out a small amount of blood.
02:12:48.000And this light turns red when that blood's drawn out.
02:12:52.000The blood is then deposited onto an index card.
02:13:20.000A, and this is huge for me, I want to make things as convenient for our athletes as possible.
02:13:25.000So, you know, you talk to our roster and ask them, would you prefer...
02:13:28.000Big needle stuck in the vein of your arm and a vial of blood taken out versus a completely painless, you know, leech of some blood from your capillaries.
02:13:36.000They're all going to say, obviously, this.
02:14:17.000And I think, you know, when you talk about, I'm asked this question regularly about local or regional MMA shows saying, hey, this is great what you guys are doing for your program, but how much does this program cost you?
02:14:28.000And it is a multi-million dollar program a year.
02:14:31.000And they say, hey, we'd love to do something like that, but, you know, we can't afford that.
02:14:35.000Something like this, where now you cut your costs down from sending blood to, you know, from maybe $1,000 to, you know, maybe $100, this device in one DCL, going to collect it out and put it on a card.
02:14:47.000I think it has some really great implications.
02:16:11.000And perception is almost as important as reality in a lot of these occasions, and they start seeing things like this, and that deterrent factor is built up, I think, higher and higher.
02:16:20.000Yeah, it seems like at one point in time there was a race, and the dopers were just like one half step ahead, but now it seems like it's even, and with the possibility of freezing your sample and then looking towards it to the future, you're...
02:16:34.000Yeah, I don't know if I call it even yet, but that gap is definitely narrowing, and you're affecting the way that dopers are doping these days.
02:16:42.000I think, you know, now the, you know, microdosing, I think, is big, and it's difficult to catch microdosing, but you've altered the behavior of the doper from taking, you know, drugs really unabated to very small amounts so the benefits aren't going to be as great.
02:16:57.000I think you've got to consider that a win for anti-doping.
02:17:14.000But, you know, again, going back to, I think I might have told this story the last time I was on, but the Floyd Landis, Lance days, they were manipulating during the Tour de France an eight-hour window.
02:18:04.000How about a wearable device that was tamper-proof that collected everything 24 hours a day that you peel it off after a couple weeks and it's tested?
02:18:11.000Yeah, or give them the wearable device so when they're sleeping, so you don't interrupt their sleep cycle, so 10 p.m.
02:18:19.000or whatever it is that you decide would be the window that they need to sleep.
02:18:23.000While they're doing that, they must have this device on that detects any changes to their metabolism, any changes in input, and then they can't eat while they're on.
02:18:30.000Yeah, I mean, believe me, the anti-doping community is always thinking about things.
02:18:34.000I talked to Travis Teigart, the CEO of USADA, last week, and he made it clear and That USADA, I think, dedicates $3 million a year grants toward research and anti-doping, things like that.
02:18:46.000So, I mean, that race is always going on and is always, you know, continuing.