Penick's Take
PENICK: Dana White's latest UFC drug testing outburst distracts from the problem once again
Feb 14, 2014 - 10:50:04 AM PENICK: Dana White's latest UFC drug testing outburst distracts from the problem once again

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

"Give me a name, he demanded, and I'll test them today, or don't ever say it to me again. He was yelling, his face reddened, the fury evident. He sounded more like he was looking for a fight than trying to promote one.

"Give me one [expletive] name right now, I'll get them on the phone, and somebody will drive to their [expletive] house today and will test them," White said. "Say it. Say it."

-Yahoo! Sports' Kevin Iole relays the furiously vitriolic and combative comments from UFC Presidnet Dana White to a group of reporters in Las Vegas on Thursday. And it wasn't over there.

After pausing for a second to silence, he resumed.

"Then don't ever [expletive] say it to me again," he said, defiantly. "You guys like to play these [expletive] games. Let's do it. I'm ready. I'm down. Let's do this right now. Give me one name. Give me 10 names. Give me all the names you want; I'll test all these [expletives] right now."

The reporters remained silent. It's not a reporter's job to make news; it's to report the news. But White was gunning for a fight.

White continues to get bogged down with questions about drug testing because the policies in place between the UFC and the athletic commissions have been inadequate towards catching cheaters. Testing on fight night alone, and doing so with urine tests which don't include the carbon isotope ratio test, no HGH testing, no EPO testing, etc.

Because of that, the entire point is that we don't know who is using, and neither does the UFC. You can't ask a reporter to give you ten names to test on the spot, while you're berating them, and expect an actual response. As Iole commented, "It's not a reporter's job to make news; it's to report the news."

It's not our jobs in the media to tell White who to test. It's White and the UFC's job to adequately test their roster so that we can find out the names of those who are using out of competition. White's said they've been nonstop testing those on TRT with blood tests to make sure they're not abusing that particular treatment. That's positive, that's a good thing.

Extend that to a larger portion of your roster not on TRT.

If the UFC conducted random testing just for those fighters in their official top 15 rankings, that would be a great start. Find out if any of those 135 fighters are using in camp. Test them randomly, and test them for everything you can; find out who in the top end of your roster has been abusing whatever you can test for during training camp.

That's how they can at least make a claim that they're attempting to curb the swell of drugs in the sport, or that they're testing more than anyone. Relying on testing every fighter when they sign, or on fight night alone, isn't going to catch anything but a small fraction of those actually using anything.

These confrontational outbursts and attempts at intimidation from White aren't answers to the questions, and silence on the part of the media in that environment belies the ridiculousness of the question on its face. We can't name names, Dana, because we don't know. And we don't know because the UFC hasn't tested adequately enough to find out. Ignoring the problem and lashing out against those who continue to bring it up won't make it go away.