Nov 5, 2008 - 11:10:08 PM By: Jason Bent, MMATorch Columnist
After being beaten handily by Michael Bisping at UFC 89, Chris Leben found himself on the wrong end of a unanimous decision once more as he failed a drug test by testing positive for Stanozolol. Having tested positive for the banned substance, Leben has now been suspended for nine months and in the form of a fine has surrendered one third of his purse from the bout. Leben's name shall now be added alongside other prominent athletes who have tested positive for this same drug.
Former UFC fighters Tim Sylvia and Phil Baroni have tested positive for Stanozolol in the past along with current UFC fighter Sean Sherk and now Leben can join their hall of shame and have his picture placed above the bronze syringe for posterity. It is not necessarily shocking to have found out that he used the steroids as his body definitely changed dramatically but it is sad to once again to have a prominent MMA fighter test positive and with it bring shame to the sport.
Stanozolol is a popular anabolic steroid for many athletes to use as it greatly increases strength and retains lean mass while not bloating the fighter or necessarily causing drastic gains in weight. It is no surprise that this is the drug that is so commonly used by fighters who are looking to do whatever it takes to obtain an advantage. In a sport such as MMA, weight needs to be controlled and as such this drug is the one of choice as it increases strength without the usual weight gain.
If anything, this is like if the rest of us could order up a stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut and enjoy the taste while not ending up bloated and heavier on the scales for having indulged ourselves. So basically, this is a "diet" steroid if ever there could be such a thing. The gains from this drug are nothing short of amazing and the side effects are, in all honesty, pretty minimal as this particular drug does not aromatize as so very many others do. This is why we are probably going to see more fighters test positive as time goes by.
Fighters are a rare breed and one thing that they all have in common is the drive to be the best and the love of competition. Every day these men train and train to become better so that they can beat the best in the sport and find themselves at the top of the ladder and wearing the championship gold. These men do whatever it takes to become the best and it is this drive that propels many to supplement their training with illegal drugs and banned supplements.
If you were to ask any of them if they were cheating, they would all tell you no; and they may be able to do so without their pulse quickening or even batting an eye. This is because they did not take the drug in order to cheat or to slack on their training but rather because they were so driven to be the best that they simply exhausted every resource possible. Of course it is cheating when the athletes are tested for the substances and it is assumed that all fighters are going into a fight without having anything in their system that could have given them an unfair advantage. However, not a single athlete who has taken the drugs have ever done so to cheat, and this is why it is unfair for us to deem them as such without fully understanding just why they made the decision that they made.
Using steroids is not akin to being a high school student taking a Biology test and peeking over at the desk next to you in order to get the answer for number five. In that case you are not studying and are cheating by copying down the answer from someone who did study or at least you hope they did. Steroid use is done to greatly enhance the hard work that is already being put in at the gym by the athlete.
It is a common misconception that if you use steroids you don't have to work out as much or as hard and you will simply develop a much better body by just taking the drug and nothing else. This is false. Extremely false actually as steroids aid the healing process and the process of protein synthesis, and as such you will find that many athletes who are on the drugs are putting in hours and hours at the gym and putting forth great efforts in their training.
The drugs do provide quite an advantage to the athlete who uses them but by no means is the drug a substitute for hard work; nor will it make a sub-par athlete a world class one if he is not already capable of performing as one. It always goes back to whatever it takes as athletes are willing to do whatever they can to improve by any means necessary and often times this will result in them turning to steroids in order to put them over the top.
I am not going to even begin to debate about whether steroids are good or bad or right or wrong and I am not going to simply prattle on about the legality of the drugs either. This is not why Chris Leben was wrong and this is not why others like him are equally out of line. The one absolute fact is that in the UFC, these drugs are not allowed. This is why fighters who ply their trade for the UFC should not ingest or inject themselves with the drugs. This reason alone is why fighters should not use the drugs at all.
It is impossible to ever tell an athlete that steroids are bad when the evidence strongly suggests that these things work and they work well. One has to only look at Leben's body in the Bisping fight to get an example of how well the drug works when combined with an excellent diet and a hard training regimen. It is impossible to tell an athlete that these drugs are going to have an adverse effect on his or her health as there has not been enough research yet that can substantiate this claim. We have all heard about what these drugs can do to the body but in most cases it has been the abuse of steroids which has led to health problems and not necessarily the use in terms of therapeutic amounts.
We live in the society that suggests that if one Tylenol can make your headache go away that we should take two just in case. More is always better and while this certainly does apply to the athletes it does not apply to them all and not one will listen to such an argument for too long. These drugs work and they work well and they can make what you already have become so much better. Anabolic steroids are the subwoofers and 1000 watt amplifiers in the trunk of your vehicle in comparison to the eighty watt system that came from the factory; even though everyone tells you that you will go deaf, you surely aren't listening as you turn it up to enjoy that chest pounding sound. This is the same as telling an athlete to not use the drugs; they simply will if they can and can do so without getting caught.
This is how you stop fighters from using these drugs. You catch them and make an example of those who do test positive and make it so that everyone else realizes how much they stand to lose should they think about trying to do whatever it takes in order to gain. Suspending Chris Leben for nine months is the right decision; and as much as I personally would love to see him fight much sooner than that, it was the right decision.
In fact, I would not be opposed to a one year suspension for such an offense. A fighter's career is a short one and if you face losing one full year of both your prime along with the earnings that come from competing, the gains from the drug will no longer outweigh the risk of getting caught. Losing one third of his purse was an excellent choice as well as this immediately impacts the fighter and punishes him in a way that not much else can come close to doing.
Anytime we have to dip into our pockets to pay a speeding ticket is when we suddenly realize that it was not so wise to drive so damned fast. Being told you could kill someone or kill others has never been enough to keep folks from speeding, but traffic tickets and the subsequent fines along with an increase in our insurance premiums becomes more than enough for us to let others pass us on the highway.
Chris Leben lost and this should firmly show anyone that steroids alone do not suddenly give you a superhuman advantage over your opponent. One only has to look back a few years ago at the Fernando Vargas vs. Oscar De La Hoya fight to see another example of a juiced up fighter having his face turned into hamburger by a superior opponent. Perhaps it is absolute justice when a fighter such as Vargas or Leben loses but there are always cases of athletes winning and being on the juice.
Ben Johnson won a gold medal in the Olympics and was chemically enhanced; Roger Clemens is rumored to have been aided by the anabolic drugs in the twilight of his career; and Barry Bonds is widely considered to have become the best power hitter in the history of the game due to steroid use. The fact that the drugs work along with the fighter's drive to be the best is why we will never end the use of steroids by athletes. However, we can certainly put a halt to it when testing becomes more stringent and penalties become more severe. Suddenly the bad outweighs the notions of the good the drugs can do and fighters will be sure to steer clear of using the substances.
We do not need another black eye on this sport of ours when the other one we suffered has finally healed. For years this sport was derided as being sleazy and less than human, and it has taken the tireless efforts of so many to finally make others see the light in that this sport is as upstanding as any other one which shares the national stage and the spotlight. The last thing we need is for our fighters to get busted for steroid use and make our sport equal with all of the others in terms of athletes on performance enhancing drugs.
I want front page coverage for MMA but I will be damned if I want it to be because our athletes are just as incorrigible as those in the other sports. For our sport to be given equal footing with the others, our athletes have to show that they can conduct themselves better than so many others and all that is so pure and honorable about our sport needs to be magnified.
So too should be the punishment of fighters who break the rules, and as such it is my opinion that suspensions such as the one Leben received shall become the norm. MMA should not give a free pass for the first positive test as baseball pretty much does and there should not be room for a fighter to become a multiple time offender. MMA needs to set a standard in terms of this, if only to show everyone that the competition is fair and this is real sport and not the barbaric sideshow that so many such as Michael Wilbon seem to imagine it is.
Chris Leben is not a bad person for having used steroids. I have used steroids and can attest to what they can do and I completely understand why an athlete would even consider such a thing. My reasons were simple yet so very complex in that I wanted to get the most I could out of what I possessed and at the same time never felt that anything I did was enough. I worked harder in the gym than anyone else and this was before ever having used the stuff. When I used the drugs I worked just as hard as before if not even harder. I truly feel that I worked harder as I now was capable of recovering from my workouts much faster and I was completely excited to see just what I could get from using them.
Steroids work and they work well, in fact they are a rare product in that they work as well as they are advertised. When Weight Watchers tells you that their spaghetti carbonara tastes as good as the real thing, they are lying and they know it. If diet food really tasted good we would all be standing side by side with Jared Fogle and holding up our fat pants and smiling for the camera. I am not proud of the fact I have used steroids but I can at least lend a more educated opinion on the drugs than can a sports writer who has never even so much as seen the drugs in person.
I studied the drugs for a few years before I ever even took them and I read all of the horror stories and yet I still couldn't wait to take my first cycle. This is why everyone is speaking to deaf ears when they wish to prattle on about how bad they are. Steroids work and if you see that they do up close and personal, you are going to take that person's word for it over a sports writer's any day of the week. I must also add that I no longer use steroids and have not done so in quite a few years. I do not condone their use, and I will do my best to steer others clear of them, but the drugs work and so far this is enough to create a new generation of those who are willing.
Which is why in terms of athletes using them, the punishment has to be severe enough that it keeps them from breaking the rules which are in place to ensure that the competition is fair and just. When what you stand to lose is far more than what you have to gain it becomes simple logic for someone to say no and not risk that which they have worked so hard for in the first place. That is precisely why Chris Leben needs to be suspended and everyone else needs to take notice and realize that it just is not worth it in the long run. Leben's abs were enough of an advertisement to use toe drugs but the fact he still could not, win coupled with having to sit on the sidelines for the better part of a year, should be enough to dissuade some future users.
Chris Leben will be back, but he will never be the same, and he certainly will never be looked at in the same way. I support his return but you can best believe that I will be eyeing his body up and down like a gay man in a truck stop restroom as I look to see if any red flags indicating he is back on the stuff seem to come up. We all shall be checking him out in his next fight and the one after that and so on and so forth.
Leben will be watched and by proxy should be watching himself and making sure that he doesn't so much as even touch something that could contain a banned substance ever again. It is fitting that he lost his fight to Bisping, and it is fitting that he loses some time from his career for his actions, but once his punishment has been served this too shall be in the past as far as I am concerned.
Chris broke the rules and shall pay the consequences and will hopefully serve as a shining example of what not to do for fighters who may be considering a cycle at this very moment. The only cycle I ever want to hear that a fighter is on had better be the kind in the gym that they will be pedaling in order to shed some weight. Steroids might work, but you won't if you are foolish enough to use them in preparation for a fight. There is no better way to discourage athletes from using performance enhancing drugs than taking away the chance for them to perform.
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