UFC
UFC Champ Demetrious Johnson says he doesn't care if his opponents are cheating or not, he's training to beat them anyway
Jul 20, 2014 - 4:00:48 PM UFC Champ Demetrious Johnson says he doesn't care if his opponents are cheating or not, he's training to beat them anyway

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

As the issue of drugs in MMA has continued to rise this summer, it's becoming clearer and clearer just how inadequate past testing methods have been. But with the implementation of random testing, some people have been caught.

The latest was Ali Bagautinov, who actually tested positive more than a week prior to his loss to Demetrious Johnson at UFC 174, with the results coming back after the event. For the Champion, he's glad Bagautinov was caught, but he's ultimately only focused on beating everyone in front of him, regardless of what they're on.

"He popped before the fight, so I wonder how his drug test looked after the fight," Johnson said in an interview with Ariel Helwani last week on The MMA Hour. "You look at that opportunity where they caught him, it seemed like his drug test during the fight was clean. So who knows who was taking these performance enhancing drugs, before the fight, then after the fight it was out of his system. So kudos to whoever caught him."

"I don't care if my opponents are cheating or not. I train my butt off to fight the man who is put in front of me whether he's on steroids or not. I want to play on a level playing field, but if they knew about it beforehand and didn't stop it, at the same time, I took care of business. No big deal."

Bagautinov tested positive for EPO, a method of blood doping to boost the production of red blood cells which in turn helps endurance in an athlete. Johnson's not sure if that necessarily helped the challenger or not, though he admits he expected the Russian to tire out a little earlier than he did, so he thinks it's certainly possible.

"Who's to say if the EPO even affected his performance?" Johnson asked. "If you know he's on it, and you know what EPO does, who knows, maybe he would have gassed in the third round. In the fourth round I had his back and he was saved by the bell. Who knows? Third round. he could have been crazy gassed. We've watched his previous fights and by the third round he was gassed, but who knows? He still had some pep in his step come the third round."

Penick's Analysis: Unfortunately for some fighters, they really can't concern themselves with what their opponent may or may not be taking. When there's only a small percentage chance right now of a fighter getting tested randomly and caught for anything, then it's entirely possible for a clean fighter to imagine their opponent being on anything and everything, so they have to try to win regardless. That's the culture of the sport, and it will remain that way until the random testing becomes the norm for a much higher range of competitors.