Drug Testing Hasn’t Grown With a Sport
By MICHAEL WEINREB
Published: July 3, 2007
He insists he has never used performance-enhancing drugs, but Jamal Patterson, a mixed martial arts fighter in the International Fight League, says he has been presumed guilty for years.
“People tell me, ‘You must have done something,’ ” he said in a telephone interview from Hoboken, N.J. “But genetically, I’m just a freak.”
Patterson wrestled in high school and played football at Colgate University. He is 6 feet tall and has slimmed down to 205 pounds for his career in the I.F.L., a team-based mixed martial arts league, which is among several organizations striving to bring this once-underground sport into the mainstream.
Patterson, who competes for the I.F.L.’s Pitbulls, says he knows how crucial public perceptions can be in a pursuit that combines punching, kicking and grappling, and that casual observers sometimes still confuse with professional wrestling.
The sport of mixed martial arts encountered doping problems last month at an event at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Royce Gracie, a pioneer of the sport, tested positive for the steroid nandrolone; Tim Persey tested positive for methamphetamine; and Johnnie Morton, a former N.F.L. receiver making his M.M.A. debut, had a higher-than-normal ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in a prefight test, then declined to take a required postfight test. All three were later suspended.
Performance-enhancing drugs would certainly give mixed martial arts fighters a tremendous physical benefit because they can aid strength, endurance and recovery. But mixed martial arts, a young and booming sport, has no national or international governing body and lacks a rigorous drug-testing policy.
“Part of the problem is that there are all these small organizations that fight in garages and on Indian reservations and in strip clubs, and there’s no drug testing, and the rules are very limited,” said Kurt Otto, the commissioner of the I.F.L. “We need to legitimize every aspect of it.”
But Gracie and Morton were competing in a major event, promoted by Fighting and Entertainment Group, which is based in Japan and also promotes K-1, one of the top mixed martial arts organizations.
K-1, like the I.F.L. and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the two most popular mixed martial arts organizations in the United States, relies primarily on state athletic commissions, which sanction mixed martial arts events in the same way they do boxing and other combat sports, to handle drug testing immediately before or after fights. But this means that in some states, not every fighter will be tested, and those who are tested will know roughly when it is coming.
“In general, I think this should not be done by the government,” said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an associate professor of medicine at New York University who has served on several committees for the World Anti-Doping Agency. “It should be done by an independent and transparent agency that’s invested in seeing a drug-free sport.”
Drug-testing programs run by athletic commissions differ from state to state. In New Jersey, which has held several mixed martial arts events this year, all fighters are tested. A positive test for performance-enhancing or recreational drugs results in a 90-day suspension, according to Nick Lembo, counsel to the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. A second positive test results in a minimum six-month suspension and mandatory enrollment in an inpatient drug treatment facility. A third positive results in a minimum two-year ban. The law also requires that other states honor those suspensions, Lembo said.
California recently began testing all fighters. Gracie was suspended for a year from the date of the fight (June 2) and fined $2,500, pending his appeal.
But at least one state does no drug testing at all.
“Our policy is that it’s up to the promoter to do the testing,” said Patrick Shaughnessy, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which sanctioned 23 mixed-martial events in 2006 and 13 through June 30 this year.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship held its first event in Texas in April in Houston, and none of the fighters were tested, said Marc Ratner, the U.F.C.’s vice president for regulatory affairs. “That doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
Ratner, who spent 13 years as executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, said the U.F.C. hired an independent laboratory to test four fighters at an event last month in Ireland.
Ratner also said that the U.F.C. had a clause in every fighter’s contract reserving the right to test randomly. Those tests, for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs, Ratner estimated, have been used only about half a dozen times. He said none had come up positive.
Neither the Ultimate Fighting Championship nor the International Fight League have a formal policy for the punishment and appeals process for fighters who fail a drug test.
Otto said he hoped the I.F.L. would have a program in place before the 2008 season begins. The league recently reached an oral agreement with USA Wrestling aimed at luring college wrestlers into the league, and Otto said he would work with national wrestling officials to develop a policy.
His hope, he said, was that mixed martial arts would eventually become an Olympic sport, which would mean it would be under the jurisdiction of the United States and World antidoping agencies.
Patterson and Pitbulls Coach Renzo Gracie, a cousin of Royce Gracie, said they hoped the I.F.L. would adopt random testing. “It’s not a witch hunt,” Gracie said. “It’s what the sport asks for.”
Otto was hesitant about whether the league would enlist an independent organization to oversee testing.
Travis Tygart, general counsel for United States Anti-Doping Agency, said independent oversight was a necessity with any testing program.
“Hopefully these new sports will recognize that they’re going to have to face these issues down the road, so they might as well do it now,” Tygart said. “They have to ask themselves: Are we going to hold on to the true value of sport? Or are we just going to be pure entertainment?”
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