3. Drug Testing is Still An Issue
Georges St. Pierre has been one of the most prominent voices in MMA against doping in the sport. In his last fight, against Johnny Hendricks, he voluntarily offered to undergo testing by VADA, an external (outside the local athletic commission) organization that does more extensive testing for performance enhancing drugs. Seeing as how is costs a fair bit, he even offered to pay for opponent Johnny Hendrick's testing. VADA has been used by other fighters, including Roy "Big Country" Nelson, Rory MacDonald, and B.J. Penn, to name a few, in an effort to keep the sport and its image clean. Hendrick's balked however. His camp wanted testing with "WADA" and here's the catch - VADA uses WADA test guidelines. WADA is the World Anti-Doping Agency, and they set out the guidelines under which most reputable organizations do their testing. WADA isn't actually going to perform tests for an MMA fight. Hendrick's camp either didn't understand that, or really didn't want to do VADA's extensive testing. The NSAC offered some extensive testing as well, and GSP ended up offering to do both, only to have it all fall apart via poor communication. GSP went ahead and did the VADA testing on his own, and both fighters were tested by the NSAC's regular testing protocols, passing without issue. All the commotion, however, had Dana White accusing the fighters of "looking stupid" when he should have been helping clarify the issue. And worse, nothing has changed. Fighters are still reluctant to do more testing. Drugs are still a massive issue in the sport. Look no further than the Wanderlei Silva (ran from a drug test) Vitor Belfort (failed a drug test that caused TRT therapy to be banned) Chael Sonnen (failed two drug tests trying to transition off the now-banned TRT) fiasco. Does GSP need to return to that?