UFC
UFC QUOTABLES: Dana White comments on fighters testing positive for PEDs in reaction to Chael Sonnen's failed UFC 117 test
Sep 19, 2010 - 11:15:14 PM UFC QUOTABLES: Dana White comments on fighters testing positive for PEDs in reaction to Chael Sonnen's failed UFC 117 test

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

"What else do I do? We’ve spent millions of dollars – literally, millions of dollars – to try to get this thing regulated so they can be tested by the government. Do you know how much it costs us to put on that fighter seminar every year? Let me tell you, we’re bringing guys in from all over the world. We have guys from England, Germany, Croatia, Australia, Korea. We have 350 guys under contract and they’re coming from all over the world. It costs us a (expletive) ton, but we do it because it’s important.

When one of them fails a test, the government is going to fine them and suspend them and tell them they can’t make a living for a year. So should I come in after they’ve already lost the ability to make a living for a year and been fined all this money and, in the worst economic disaster in the history of the world, fine them another huge amount and take away their ability to make a living even longer?

These are guys with homes and families and personal lives and bills and debts and obligations, just like me and you. After they lost all this money already, money that, A, they’ve probably already spent and B, which they owe taxes, do I fine them another huge amount? What else do you do to a human being?"

-UFC President Dana White talks to Yahoo Sports! columnist Kevin Iole in reaction to Chael Sonnen's failed PED test and what the UFC can or will do against those fighters testing positive for PEDs.

Penick's Analysis: At this point, the athletic commissions simply aren't doing their jobs well enough when it comes to steroids and performance enhancing drugs in the sport, but it's not going to be the promoters that punish the offenders above and beyond at this point. There needs to be more stringent testing, and Sonnen is far from the only fighter in the sport using right now, but once a fighter has served the punishment handed down to him by the commission for getting caught it's not on the UFC to punish them further. Furthermore, I don't blame White for his take on the situation. Sonnen likely cost himself the biggest fight of his career from a monetary standpoint, not to mention the sponsorship money he'll lose from not getting that main event fight, and the UFC won't need to do any further damage to him that he hasn't already done to himself here. Of course, we still don't know what it was that triggered the positive result, but no matter what argument comes out he'll remain tainted with this failed test as every other athlete who has tested positive has been.

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