Vitor Belfort Admits To Failed UFC Drug Test

It looks like Joe Rogan was right after all. Vitor Belfort has released a statement confirming a failed drug test this past February. After months of speculation, the UFC€™s Vitor Belfort, set to face Chael Sonnen at UFC 175 in July pending a hearing with the NSAC, has released a statement via Instagram in which he admits to failing an out of competition drug test earlier this year. The result of the February test, long suspected to have been a failure due to Belfort€™s avoidance of the issue, will likely play a key role in whether the fighter will be granted a license to appear at the July event, hosted in Las Vegas, Nevada. The match-up with Sonnen was the result of Belfort's fellow countryman Wanderlei Silva evading an NSAC drug test earlier this month, something Silva claimed was a misunderstanding stemming from English not being his native language, and the NSAC representative sent to preform the test not identifying himself as a member of the athletic commission. Performance enhancing drug use, in other words, is hovering over UFC 175 like a black cloud. For Belfort's part, it has long been known that the Brazillian fighter was a user and advocate of TRT (Testosterone replacement therapy), once legal, now banned by the NSAC and similar athletic commissions. Banned officially at the end of February, Belfort's failure, while out of competition, was suspected by many, including UFC colour commentator Joe Rogan, to be the very reason TRT was nixxed. Per Belfort's statement, he had not made a formal application for a therapeutic use exemption for TRT, but was considering filing for one. The test results, however, "indicated that my testosterone level was above the therapeutic range." In other words, even had Belfort obtained an exemption, this test would have been considered a failure. He goes on to state that "shortly thereafter, on February 27th, 2014, the NSAC banned all TRT and I stopped my TRT treatment that very same day. Now that I am applying for a license in Nevada, I don't want any clouds hanging over my ability to compete and I understand it is my responsibility to prove to the NSAC that I have the requisite fitness to be licensed in Nevada." Unfortunately for Belfort, it's not his fitness that is the issue here, it's his character, and there is, in fact, a very large cloud hanging over his ability to compete. Whether the NSAC is willing to overlook a positive test that led to the banning of the very treatment Belfort was using will not be known until June 17, when he goes before the commission with his application for a fight license.