Chael Sonnen Must Clear a Drug Test to Get Paid

MMA fighter Chael Sonnen, one of the most interesting fighters in the sport, recently said that in his return to fighting he must be clean when he gets in the octagon for Bellator.  If not, he will have to face the music – which means FORFEITING HIS PAYDAY.

Ouch!  Hopefully he uses one of these kits.

Chael Sonnen Must Pass Drug Test to Be Paid

He won’t be in the USADA testing pool, but he did say during a call with Bellator MMA President (Scott Coker) that if he does not pass a test while fighting for that brand, it will result in a 100% loss of his fight purse. It’ll also force him to cough up an additional $500,000 as part of the agreement.

“That is in writing,” said Sonnen.

His debut has not be penciled in just yet, but there have been some names thrown around for potential first fights.  Tito Ortiz, Rory MacDonald, Fedor Emelianko, and Wanderlei Silva have all been mentioned.  Sonnen will fight middleweight to heavyweight.

Stay tuned, because if he doesn’t pass his test, I can say “dude, you should have read my blog.”

Thanks to MMAFighting.com for this story.

Related Reading:UFC hit by PED Scandal.

The Latest NFL Suspensions Due To Drug Tests

Drug test results are big news in the athletic world right now. A lot of big boys in various sports are having to take their medicine because of something else they swallowed.

The news hasn’t rocked their various sports worlds; on the contrary, the NFL has responded to a spate of positive drug tests by tightening regulations recently, prompting what some might call a harsh response to some bad choices; what others would say is justice overdue.

NFL Bad Boys

Two high-profile sportsmen are in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, Le’Veon Bell of the Steelers and Arthur Jones from the Colts. These well-paid individuals took risks with their careers by ingesting banned substances and are now paying the penalty with a 4-game suspension each.

With all the money they make, audiences might wonder why they need to ingest drugs in order to improve performance instead of working with personal trainers. Presumably, it’s the money that motivates them to look beyond legal boundaries; money that’s worth the chances they take with their careers and their lives.

Tale of Two Drug Tests

In fact, this has to do with more than two tests. Le’Veon Bell is in trouble for missing several tests paired with a reputation for having tested positive in the past. Arthur Jones tested positive for the first time in his career, but that has not stopped him from falling foul of regulators who recently decided that one positive test was enough for a 4-game suspension.

Affecting Careers

News reports regarding these incidents point out that, while suspension has hit the two men hard, their behavior has provided the catalyst for progress. The Colts might use this as their incentive to hire someone else in his place.

Bell’s absence gives other players a chance to join the first-team squad and make a name for themselves. Even on the team there is plenty of competition for those juicy spots and the pay checks that go with them.

Rules about PEDs, Banned Substances and Drugs

Marijuana is a banned substance, yet it isn’t generally thought of as “performance-enhancing.” Startlingly, studies show that some athletes perform better after consuming weed if they consume just enough and not too much.

Recent regulations do not permit any marijuana to be found in a sports professional’s test results. If this is for the same reason as fighting sports, then it is because it is considered a painkiller, and that they state an athlete could get injured worse, due to not feeling any pain.

Performance enhancers include steroids to increase muscle production, stimulants which encourage short-term energy production, and HCG for increased muscle growth. Athletes even turn to blood doping, thereby increasing the supply of red blood cells to increase the amount of oxygen moving around their bodies. This requires a transfusion of one’s own blood directly before a game or a race.

Athletes don’t just lose their careers when they take PEDs. Some of them have died. Other substances regulatory organizations look out for mask signs of drug use or cause excessive urination so as to eliminate them rapidly. Diuretics and masking substances are also banned. What if someone won’t go through with a scheduled or random test so as to be sure of not testing positive?

This looks very bad indeed. The only way to avoid a positive drug test is to either stay away from banned substances, or look into information about how to pass your drug test if you’re stuck in this situation after finding out you have something in your system that may cause you to fail.

The UFC Hit By PED Scandal Again

The Ultimate Fighting Championship has once more been rocked by scandal. A few more of its professional fighters have been in the spotlight for being accused of using banned substances, such as Jon Jones, Brock Lesnar and Chad Mendes.

These accusations in the UFC do not come as a shock; nor do revelations of other UFC abusers. In fact, the cynical reaction has been to believe all fighters probably use Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED) at least some time, knowingly or innocently. And Nate Diaz is famously known for saying that all fighters use steroids.

Help from the USADA

A non-governmental agency called the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) runs a website, regulates the UFC from within, and seeks to educate competitors about the dangers and consequences of using banned substances when they train or compete.

Random tests seek to discover a fighter developing greater strength by taking supplements such as drink mix powders and tablets which contain a variety of PED or promote muscle growth in unnatural ways. They also test for products potentially used to mask such results.

usada.orgHelpful Website

The USADA website helpfully outlines the various compounds which can be injected or ingested to these ends, some of them not obvious. One expects to see certain illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and opiates, but not protein powders and amino acids.

The list is alarming in that it contains some items found in food supplements sold over-the-counter at gyms, drug stores, health food stores, and online which the average person wouldn’t recognize as illicit or illegal.

Only a fighter well-versed in the rules, regulations, and ongoing controversy around such things could possibly know, and even then the list is an ever-changing miasma of potential poisons.

The USADA website also highlights the reasons why a performance-enhancing drug would be controlled, be inspected by the FDA, or should cause concern. They include potential harm to the person consuming them, not just unnatural advantages in the ring.

The UFC

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was created in the USA in 1993. It started out with fighters in separate disciplines claiming theirs was the better one, but eventually all martial arts were combined into what we know as MMA: karate, judo, tae kwon do, etc. Mixed Martial Arts is not hampered by a lot of rules.

The few there are allow competitors to incorporate standing moves with floor action from all of the martial arts disciplines. Fighters are divided by their weight into various numerous categories the way boxers are to make the fight as fair and even as possible.

Such fairness makes for cleaner fighting and also for more entertaining contests. An uneven match is boring. The UFC website provides further enlightenment as to the origins, rules, and schedule of this popular sport.

Exciting

Obviously, this is not a boring activity to watch and can be bloody. One doesn’t participate actively for many years; it is too damaging on the body, so participants can turn their skills to acting, doing stunts, coaching younger participants, or roles within the UFC.

A match is held most weeks of the year between competitors from around the world. The UFC airs matches on television to a strong reception from the public familiar with celebrities like Jason Statham who use their skills in the movie industry to create diverse and exciting fight scenes.

Results of News

Will the Ultimate Fighting Championship organization come undone as a result of high-profile doping cases? It is unlikely. The Olympics is also hit by these problems regularly; almost every sport is, and there have been recent headlines that the UFC is notorious for frequent testing for banned substances. Athletes give in to their desire to be the best and do things which harm their sport, their bodies, and their countries’ reputations.

Internal regulatory agencies such as the USADA try their best to limit the damage these issues cause, but doping issues do not seem to have dampened the public’s interest in UFC. In fact, they give new fighters a chance to compete in place of suspended pros.

If you are facing an upcoming test, here’s my insight into drug test solutions.

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