Former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir’s two-year anti-doping suspension from the sport has finally been made official by USADA.
Mir’s suspension dates back to April of 2016 when he tested positive for an anabolic steroid known as Oral Turinabol following an in-competition test after his knockout loss to Mark Hunt at UFC Fight Night 85 in Brisbane Australia.
As such, Mir will now be eligible to fight again from April 8th of next year, by which point will be just a month shy of his 39th birthday.
When his drug test failure was first revealed, Mir repeatedly denied having taken the performance-enhancer and speculated that it could have been due to tainted kangaroo meat he’d eaten while in Australia.
However, it turns out that USADA have since gone back and retested all of Mir’s previous samples, at which point they discovered the presence of Oral Turinabol metabolites in an out-of-competition test he had in February of the same year, which had previously not been picked up by USADA.
Despite this latest revelation, Mir is continuing to deny any wrongdoing in a newly released statement on his Facebook page.
“I have consistently denied knowingly taking anything that would violate USADA’s guidelines,” Mir wrote. “I was originally told that my post fight sample from March 20, 2016, had been flagged for a trace metabolite, following my clean test the previous month on February 5. For this past year, I have been focused on analyzing anything I could within that six week window that could’ve possibly been the cause…testing supplements and reviewing dietary habits.
“It is frustrating to now be told that USADA has changed their mind about the February 5 test, claiming that the sample they once cleared is now clouded with the same trace metabolite. Even more frustrating is that I’ve been told that the long term metabolite could date back two years, prior to the implementation of USADA standards and possibly to a time when I had a legal exemption for testosterone replacement therapy.
“As hard as it was to try to retrospectively analyze everything I had consumed within a fairly recent six week period of my life, I would have no idea where to start going back years into my past. What I can do is reiterate my denial and ask you to note that my position on this issue has remained consistent. By contrast, USADA now has two versions of their narrative concerning me.
“I will discuss this latest development at length on Monday’s edition of my Phone Booth Fighting podcast. I invite you to listen as I will have much more to say on this issue. The outpouring of support that I continue to receive from my fans has been overwhelming, and I am eternally grateful to each of you for that.
