Following in the footsteps of BJ Penn and Rory MacDonald, it appears that UFC 154 headliners Georges St.Pierre and Carlos Condit are set to agree to additional voluntary drugs testing procedures in the lead-up to their fight on November 17th.
Welterweight champ GSP appears to have been the catalyst for this plan, telling sportnet.ca last week that, “you can’t be against virtue. If you have nothing to hide there is nothing wrong with doing additional testing such as VADA, Olympic-type testing, etc. I don’t condemn the athletic commissions but you can’t be against additional testing. If Carlos wants to do it, I am more than willing to go with VADA [Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency].”
As it turns out Condit is happy to accept that challenge, but he’s raised the stakes further by making a counter-offer that would see their tests being overseen by USADA (U.S Anti-Doping Agency) who were recently involved in a high-profile case featuring superstar cyclist Lance Armstrong.
“Carlos is obviously interested in upholding the integrity of the sport. He would be more than interested to submit to testing, but we’d prefer to do it via the U.S,” Condit’s manager said. “Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) because we feel they are the most reputable drug testing organization in the world.”
At the time of writing it appears the two fighters have still to come to a final decision on which agency they’ll use.
It’s interesting to see that St.Pierre was behind this in the first place. It seems that the motivations behind his decision are different from BJ Penn who first dreamed up this concept for his fight with the Canadian’s team-mate MacDonald.
On that occasion Penn appeared to be challenging his opponent to prove that he wasn’t using performance-enhancing drugs, but in GSP’s case it seems more like he wants to show the world that he’s not cheating rather than having a major concern over what Condit is or isn’t doing.
Either way I don’t mind it, but I wonder how the UFC really feels about it as in a way it’s basically drawing attention to the fact that their existing drug-testing measures are inadequate.
