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Rich Hansen's Take
HANSEN: Suggestions to Level the Playing Field in Mixed Martial Arts
Apr 4, 2012 - 10:25:35 PM
HANSEN: Suggestions to Level the Playing Field in Mixed Martial Arts
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By: Rich Hansen, MMATorch Columnist

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You know what? Screw it. As long as steroids exist, and as long as testosterone injections exist, and as long as impotent athletic commissions do the bare minimum to catch drug cheats, we're never going to know if there's a level playing field for fighters who want to fight clean. As long as the UFC willfully chooses to turn a blind eye, passing the buck to incompetent state commissions who have standards weaker than mine in high school while trying to find a date for the prom, we're never going to know who's clean and who's dirty.

Worry not, I have a solution. Of course I do. Since a huge percentage of fighters - and athletes of all sports - are going to cut as many corners as possible for even the slightest of edges, I say we make steroids mandatory. That's right. Inject them all. Every last one of them. You say you want to fight clean? Tough sh**, you're getting the needle, druggie. When I'm in charge, you're getting the needle in the middle of the cage, as Bruce Buffer is announcing your weight (or your mass in kilograms or stones when the UFC dabbles in locales that don't have a legitimate athletic commission. That would be everywhere but New Jersey, for those of you keeping score at home).

Give everyone the needle, in public, with the entire world watching, and then we will finally know once and for all that we've got a level playing field. No more need to go to witch doctors for sketchy therapeutic use exemptions. No more heavyweight divisions ruined by Josh Barnett pissing hotter than Jessica Rabbit in a bikini. No more entire promotions brought to their knees by Josh Barnett pissing hotter than the filling of a cherry pie fresh out of the oven (you know when it sticks to the roof of your mouth and burns like hell? And for a week you can still feel strings of flesh peeling off the roof of your mouth?).

Better idea. People are going to buy the pay per views whether or not we stick a few needles into a few arms, so let's steal a page from Rahm Emanuel's playbook and not let a crisis go to waste. I smell a new reality television show. A one hour special documenting 10 drug dealers chasing down 10 fighters who publicly claim to be clean. Not that anyone will believe there are 10 fighters who aren't juicing, but work with me here. Anyhooo, we get 10 camera crews to follow the 10 pushers while they try to track down the allegedly clean fighters, and stick em in the ass with some nandrolone while they're working out, or having dinner, or signing autographs. It'll be like the clippers scene in Jackass, but with a stanazolol-loaded syringe instead of electric clippers, and a bunch of buff athletes instead of a bunch of, well, Jackasses.

Tell me that wouldn't make for good TV. It would be like "Dog the Bounty Hunter" meets "Running Man." Richard Dawson might not be able to host, like he did in Running Man, but tell me Todd Harris wouldn't jump all over the opportunity to host this spectacle. The UFC could sponsor the show, and say they are finally doing something other than turning a blind eye to an ever-growing PED issue. It's a win-win.

My idea is far less extreme than it sounds. Let's work under the premise that 99.9% of fighters are rolling dirty or whatever the kids say today. I might be rounding up, but I'm not far off with that estimate. It's far easier to get everyone on the juice than it would be to 100% guaranteed get everyone off of the juice. There's only one way that would happen. Not urine tests. Not blood tests. Not daily DNA testing. Nope. There is only one way to guarantee that everyone fights clean.

Mandatory forced dialysis.

That's right. Instead of shooting up a few CCs of deca durabolin in the cage, everyone has every drop of their blood replaced, in the cage. Of course, a dialysis session has its own drawbacks and complications (no, really, it sucks), and it won't stop fighters from being roided up like the WWF in 1992 up until the moment they walk in the cage, but at least then our fights will have the integrity of knowing the fighters are fighting clean damn it!

Or we could just stay with the current system, where 5% of the dirty fighters get caught, some people get disgusted, others claim the system is working, and others claim to not give a rat's ass, and then everyone forgets about steroids and PEDs until the next failed test.

Follow me on Twitter, @MMATorchRich


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