JRE MMA Show #53 with Jeff Novitzky

[0] Three, two, one.

[1] Boom.

[2] Got a little thing going on here now.

[3] A little circle.

[4] Hello, Jeff.

[5] Merry Christmas.

[6] What's up, Joe?

[7] You too.

[8] I've been the easiest week in my life or my careers last week, but hanging in there.

[9] To make this stand alone so that people don't have to go figuring this out on their own.

[10] And I'm sure many, many fans that are tuning in already know the gist of the details.

[11] Let's lay this out from the beginning.

[12] John Jones' initial failed test.

[13] Yeah, so that was July of 2017.

[14] He tested positive for approximately 20, anywhere from 20 to 60 picograms of a long -term metabolite, known as the M3 metabolite, of a substance called dehydrochloral methyl testosterone, D -H -C -Mtrymt, also known as oral turinamble.

[15] And this was over a year ago.

[16] what was determined to be the source of this stuff?

[17] Never determined what the source was.

[18] So John went through a full arbitration hearing, was never able to determine where it came from, tested all the supplements he was using, went through many interviews with USADA, had a full -on arbitration hearing.

[19] The source was never determined where it came from.

[20] Why was his suspension so low or so short if it wasn't determined?

[21] So, I mean, there's many factors that go into what that suspension was.

[22] I would argue in the totality of the evidence that was presented in that arbitration that it wasn't a short suspension because really one key thing came out at arbitration.

[23] So John went to arbitration before an individual by name of Richard McLaren.

[24] Richard McLaren has an arbitration group up in Canada, and McLaren is probably worldwide known as one of the most credible guys in anti -doping.

[25] I know you had the Icarus producer, director on the McLaren report was the report that came from all that.

[26] He basically investigated the Russian state being involved in doping in the Sochi games and put out actually a series of reports on it, detailing it up to 1 ,000 Russian athletes were breaking the rules and the Russian laboratory was helping them get around it.

[27] So he's a very, very respected guy.

[28] He's independent of obviously the UFC.

[29] He's independent of Usada.

[30] He acts on his own.

[31] And his determination was?

[32] His determination, and I'll read you kind of what he said.

[33] He said, I find that all evidence available to me leads me to conclude that the violation was not intended, nor could have enhanced the athlete's performance.

[34] So A, non -intentional.

[35] So non -intentional ingestion.

[36] I mean, there's no argument that it was in his system, but he found the evidence to show non -intentional use.

[37] And then he went further saying that based on the numbers of what he saw in the evidence, there was not even a performance enhancing benefit afforded to John for having this long -term metabolite in his system.

[38] And I think that's significant when you talk about, hey, 15 months, that's kind of light being that this is a second time through.

[39] I would argue that if there was an argument, that maybe it's on the higher end.

[40] And certainly, you know, we'll talk about the California Commission.

[41] Andy Foster took that position in John's recent.

[42] California hearing.

[43] He was a little bit critical of USADA.

[44] He thought, you know, he's intimately familiar with his evidence, both in the previous case and this occurrence, and he also saw that there was no evidence that an independent arbitrator, you know, made this statement and decision of John intentionally cheating.

[45] So if anything, you know, I'd say that potentially there could be an argument that it was, you know, on the higher end versus the lower end.

[46] Because of the fact that it was an unintentional ingestion.

[47] Exactly.

[48] Now, what is John's excuse?

[49] What is what is John said how he got this into his system?

[50] Yeah, well, look, you know, and it's detailed in the arbitration hearing at all.

[51] John fully admits that, you know, some of the lifestyle decisions he was making, you know, the partying and things, you know, probably did not lead to to making smart decisions and making smart choices in terms of what was being ingested in the body.

[52] But certainly his testimony was under oath that I have never intentionally cheated and did not.

[53] not intentionally put this substance in my body.

[54] And not only this case, but as we talk about the subsequent case here, I think you'll see that based on the numbers, you know, coming out of his tests and based on some studies that have been done on some of these substances, it would tend to support that.

[55] Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't John test negative, then test positive for extremely low numbers?

[56] This is the initial test before we get into the most recent failed test.

[57] He did.

[58] So test negative, then test positive very shortly after with a very small trace amount.

[59] Correct.

[60] So he had two negative tests on July 7th and July 8th, I believe, of 2017.

[61] And then Wayan Day, I think it was July 28th, he was positive for a very low level of the M3 metabolite.

[62] And we might as well start here.

[63] So again, going back to Icarus, remember the doctor?

[64] I mean, he's the main character in that Rochankov.

[65] In 2011, he put out a study on oral turinibol.

[66] He actually, my understanding, is dose himself and then studied the excretion of his urine and what was coming out of it over the weeks and months after and determined that there were multiple, maybe up to 50 metabolites that once this DHCMT was ingested into the body, the body converted into other substances and these metabolites stayed around.

[67] He identified some short -term metabolites, some medium -term metabolites, and some long -term metabolites, specifically the M -3 that John's tested positive for it.

[68] So these long -term metabolites would indicate that it was taken a long time ago?

[69] They would stay around for the longest.

[70] Why was he testing negative and then testing positive for these extremely low numbers?

[71] That's a good question, and that's basically the question of point.

[72] but what was not occurring and what has never occurred in any of John's samples is any presence of the short and medium -term metabolites.

[73] And if you look at Rachankov's study, he identifies a couple of these medium -term metabolites, Roman numeral 1 and Roman numeral 2.

[74] And he says these metabolites, based on his study, will stay in the body at least 22 days.

[75] well let's look back to the July 7th and 8th you know positive test he's negative on July 7th and 8th for everything for the parent compound for the short -term medium -term metabolites and the long -term metabolites go 20 21 days later so within that 22 -day window which his study shows the short and medium -term metabolites would still be showing up and there's no presence whatsoever of the short or medium -term metabolites now again we'll get into this a little bit of the short -term metabolites now again we'll get little bit more, but I think the science, what it's showing, is a pulsing effect for this long -term metabolite, meaning once you ingest, whether intentionally or non -intentionally, oral tyrrina ball into the body, the body breaks it down, produces short term and medium term, which is, you know, visible for a short and medium amount of time, and then this M3, which is produced for a long period of time.

[76] I think what the issue appears to be, and we'll get into this, the UFC program is not the only program that's seen this.

[77] There's another professional sports league that has seen it very frequently.

[78] Usada has also seen this on the Olympic side, but we're seeing this strange action with the long -term M3 metabolite, and the theory is it may be hiding in the fat tissues surrounding organs and maybe have a pulsing effect where it's released at certain times and other times you can't detect it.

[79] And this is not the actual substance itself, but it's a metabolite.

[80] Correct.

[81] Which indicates a reaction to this substance.

[82] It indicates the body breaking down the parent compound, the oral tyrrhenobol and turning it into these other things, which are stored in the body.

[83] These metabolites are not performance -enhancing drugs.

[84] They're the result of the breakdown of the parent drug in the body.

[85] Now, how much time is it detectable, the actual drug itself?

[86] So pretty quick.

[87] it's a pretty quick clearance time.

[88] I think Rachankov's study says, you know, maybe a week, so it's not around for very long.

[89] And that's why he conducted the study.

[90] Ironically enough, and I was going to go watch Icarus here last night, and I've had too much going on the last week to kind of refresh my mind.

[91] But apparently this was part of his protocol for Russian athletes.

[92] He knew a coach that was still giving the oral torrential ball to Russian athletes, and he had a falling out with a coach.

[93] So he goes off on the and studies, hey, the parent compound is going to get in and out of the body pretty quick.

[94] It's going to be difficult to detect that.

[95] Let's try to figure out what stays around and leaves markers in the body for a long time.

[96] And so he developed these short and long -term metabolite tests and was able to catch some of this coach's athletes for using the oral torrentable.

[97] Interesting.

[98] So the actual drug itself has gone from the system, but the metabolite remains.

[99] Now, what is the window that this metabolite is supposed to be detectable in the body?

[100] because we're talking now, what are we at, like 18 months?

[101] Yeah, so here's the, here's the problem.

[102] Supposed initial ingestion?

[103] Yep.

[104] Because my question is, these same long -term metabolites, these existed a year plus ago.

[105] It was more than a year?

[106] How long ago?

[107] That's the thing.

[108] So July 2017 was the initial test.

[109] So with all the experts, and we'll get through this, what all the experts are telling us, is there is no evidence of re - ingestion.

[110] And most likely, this is still remnants from the July 2017.

[111] test, however it was to enter into a system.

[112] And we'll go through some of these testing numbers that have shown negatives, followed by very low -level picogram quantities.

[113] My question, though, was that the ingestion that happened that he tested positive for in July of 2017 indicated a long -term effect, right?

[114] It was a long -term metabolite.

[115] Correct.

[116] So, meaning it had already been in his system for a year or so.

[117] It absolutely could have predated.

[118] You know, the theory the first time through was, Something had to have entered his system between July 7th and July 8th, those negatives and this low picogram reading on July 28th.

[119] Over this last year, there's been a lot of study into this long -term metabolite.

[120] As I mentioned, this isn't just a UFC issue.

[121] There's another major professional sports league that, for the time being, wants to keep their testing confidential.

[122] But they've shared that information with scientists, with USADA, with myself.

[123] They saw it on multiple occasions, this pulsing effect over a year where you'd see.

[124] positive test.

[125] But this is well over a year.

[126] We're talking two and a half years now, right?

[127] If it's a year, if it's a, if it's a, if in July he had taken it a year ago.

[128] We're talking a year and a half, right?

[129] July 2017.

[130] Correct.

[131] A year and a half from July 17.

[132] But it could have been in a system a year prior.

[133] I don't know.

[134] Yeah.

[135] It could have been a couple months a year.

[136] I don't know.

[137] He had never showed up for that M3 metabolite four.

[138] He had been tested, you know, for it.

[139] He had been tested multiple times in the program.

[140] Correct me if I'm wrong.

[141] Isn't the same level?

[142] Isn't it approximately?

[143] the same picograms that exist today in 2018 that were there in 2017.

[144] Generally, if you look, and we can go over these numbers, it fluctuates, you know, from single digits, it never gets into triple digits to mid -double digits.

[145] So there's some as low as nine pika -grams over that time.

[146] There was some at 60 pica -grams.

[147] However - Let's explain a picagram to someone because it's a preposterously small thing.

[148] It's insane.

[149] And, you know, The analogy that I heard early on was, and I think John used this, throw a pinch of salt in an Olympic swimming pool, and I'm like, okay, well, that's, you kind of wrap your head around now.

[150] Let's go to the other side.

[151] Let's talk about something really small that we know of and how many times you have to break down that small particle to get to a picogram.

[152] So one grain of salt, and we all know what that looks like, right?

[153] You put that in front of you, and you split that, and I mentioned this week 50 million, it's actually 58 million.

[154] If you split that 58 million times, a grain of salt, each one is a picogram.

[155] I mean, it's incomprehensible the detection level and how small that is.

[156] It really is.

[157] It's crazy.

[158] And how many picograms do they find in his system?

[159] So he's gone from, and I'll read through it here.

[160] So here's since the initial appearance of the M3 metabolite, here's what John's tests look like in those picogram reading.

[161] So the first one was collection date was July 28th.

[162] 2017, he had a concentration of 80 picograms.

[163] However, let me caution and I'll read something from an expert.

[164] When you get down to these picogram levels, the science is somewhat inexact because it's such a small amount.

[165] So the variable, the plus or minus, you know, can be anywhere from 20, 30, I've seen in some instances 50 or 60.

[166] So what this scientist's name is, his name is Larry Bowers.

[167] He was formerly the USADA science director.

[168] He's currently retired and independently consults.

[169] Before that, he ran an Olympic committee accredited laboratory at the University of Indiana.

[170] The guy's got 20 to 25 years of anti -doping experience.

[171] Here's what he told me about, you know, when you're analyzing small picogram levels.

[172] Although the two respective laboratories, report of concentration, I would caution against becoming too fixated on the numbers.

[173] First, the numbers are really estimates of concentration and probably should be considered a range of about plus or minus 20 picograms for ML.

[174] And he said the December 9th result would be in the range of Johns.

[175] And we'll get to that between 60 and 100.

[176] Second, while the adjustment of concentration by specific gravity attempts to deal with the variability of urinary excretion rates, it is in exact and adds variability to the estimates.

[177] Finally, and most importantly, science has no clear understanding of the variance of urinary excretion of drugs at alter trace concentrations.

[178] So basically saying, look, I mean, we have a general idea how this works in science, but, and I think this instance comes to play, be real careful if you're going to be the guy with the pseudoscience out there saying, wait a second, John jumped from 20 to 60 from September to December, and that means he re -engested it.

[179] What he's saying here is slow your role on that, that it's such a small, incomprehensible level that we don't really know what those variances are going to look like.

[180] Now, I think if we saw jumps and John from single digit, eight or nine picogram to multiple hundred digit picograms, there would be a concern and maybe some readministration, but the experts I've speaking to, when you're talking variability of 10, 20, 30, 40, it's not that significant at the picogram level.

[181] What is the window where this long -term metabolites starts to express itself.

[182] Like, you said there's short -term and there's medium -term, this is the long -term.

[183] How long -does it take before the long -term one?

[184] That's a good question.

[185] I don't have the answer to that.

[186] It may be in Rochenkoff's report here.

[187] And I would encourage those that are at home, you know, playing scientists at their computer.

[188] The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rachinkov writes report detection and mass spectrometric characterization of novel long -term dehydrochloral testosterone metabolites in human urine.

[189] I'm not sure when that long -term metabolite, how long it takes to show up.

[190] Here's the problem, though, with this substance.

[191] He did a real brief study.

[192] My understanding is administered it to himself.

[193] That's the only study that exists.

[194] Oral Turinibol, D .H .CMT, to my understanding, is not approved for use for human consumption anywhere, anywhere in any country.

[195] So you can't have clinical trials ethically in the medical world because it's just not legal to give this to human beings.

[196] So, you know, we're already kind of behind the eight ball here and that, you know, as compared to other substances where you can do clinical trials because they're readily available via prescription or whatever, this substance is not.

[197] This substance was created by the East Germans in the 70s and 80s.

[198] and was part of their state -sponsored doping program where they were doping their athletes.

[199] And can you correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what I've read is that this is particularly effective when people are cutting weight.

[200] Yeah, I mean...

[201] Is that true or is this just more...

[202] I don't know about that.

[203] I think some may be confusing tyrrinaball with oral tyrantabal, two completely different substances.

[204] That's actually very important.

[205] Yeah.

[206] There's very different effects on the body.

[207] There's very different windows in terms of detection time.

[208] explain that to you've got to be really careful in this world of performance enhancing drugs there's names that are interchangeable there's different you know chemical names where you change a little bit of that chemical name it could mean a completely different substance there's instances where the chemical name is different but the substance is actually the same so when trying to compare two substances you know make sure if you're at home doing that analysis you're comparing the right one straight turinibol is different than oral turinibol well What is the difference?

[209] Yeah, I can't tell you.

[210] I'm not as familiar with Turinibol, other than it's not oral Turinibol.

[211] So, but there is a difference in terms of the detection window?

[212] Yeah, there would be.

[213] I mean, different substances create and throw out different metabolites, and different substances have different detection windows.

[214] So I haven't done my study and research on straight Turinibal other than knowing it's different than the substance here.

[215] So, Gregory Richenkov, that's how you say his last name, right?

[216] He was the only guy to do.

[217] do an actual verified study.

[218] Now, is this study been, is it been peer reviewed?

[219] Yeah, I mean, well, it's published in the journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology.

[220] So in order to get something published, it needs to be peer reviewed.

[221] Right.

[222] So has it been replicated anywhere?

[223] Not that I'm aware of.

[224] So it's just, so we have one study, which is really fascinating.

[225] Correct.

[226] So we know that, first of all, we know this is an effect of steroid.

[227] We know it works.

[228] Yeah, these Germans, I think, show that they wouldn't have been using it.

[229] it's not a difficult, it's not an easy, easy substance to get a hold of.

[230] Look, when it's not approved for use anywhere in the world, it's only available on the black market.

[231] So you probably have to go to China to get it manufactured or, you know, research chemical supply company.

[232] It's not supposed to be provided to humans.

[233] Now, I'm certainly not attributing this to you, but there were rumors.

[234] This was one discussion was that one of the possible ways you could have ingested this and let's be very kind John likes to party okay one of the things about partying is people do cocaine one of the things about cocaine is sometimes cocaine is cut with creatine one of the things about creatine is oftentimes you're buying cheap creatine especially one of the things that we've had with on it on it's our products are all third party verified but in the initial goings when we try different manufacturers especially for alpha brain, we found there were other trace elements that were in alpha brain that weren't supposed to be in there.

[235] And it's because of the vats that they mix these things up with.

[236] And one of the things that we had heard was that creatine oftentimes is made in the same place where they might be making oral turinibol, they might be making anabolic, they might be making a bunch of different things.

[237] And trace amounts of this stuff can get into the creatine.

[238] They use creatine to cut cocaine with.

[239] Is this possible or am I just...

[240] Yeah, it's, it's, it's a absolutely a theory.

[241] I don't, you know, I, I can't sit here and said that happen, but I will have heard similar things.

[242] I have heard similar things.

[243] I know for a fact, based on my previous career, I worked closely with the DEA.

[244] I was with the FDA.

[245] I worked cases involving street distribution of recreational drugs, including cocaine.

[246] I know for a fact that creotin is one of the most common substances that cocaine is cut with because of a similar look, yeah.

[247] Some more color, similar feel.

[248] So getting back to McLaren's arbitration decision, I mean, this is publicly available record, so I'm not saying anything new, but McLaren addresses at least John's lifestyle around this time.

[249] And he says the athlete openly admitted to Usada that prior to, and for a period of time, after the reporting of his second adverse analytical finding on July 28, 2017, the athlete used illicit so -called street drugs, including cocaine.

[250] Now, for me to sit here and say, hey, that's where it came from.

[251] I don't know.

[252] know that.

[253] What's the time period he's talking about there?

[254] The athlete admitted that prior to and for a period of time after the reporting of a second adverse analytical finding on July 27, 2017 admitted.

[255] So before that test and sometime after.

[256] Okay.

[257] So does that make sense, though?

[258] If it's cut, if that's where the source of it is, does it make sense that that would show up as a long -term metabolite?

[259] Doesn't it?

[260] need a long time in the body to digest, or do we not know enough about the window of time?

[261] Yeah, I don't know if we know enough about the window of time.

[262] You know, my theory in looking at it is even if there's a small amount of the oral turinabol in that, it's going to for a period of time show that parent compound at a small picogram amount and the short and midterm metabolites in the small picogram amount, we have never seen those in the history of John's testing.

[263] only this long -term metabolite.

[264] So that may be indication that it occurred maybe even prior to what we're talking about here.

[265] Is it something that could be accentuated in some way by the weight cutting process?

[266] I absolutely think that could be a factor.

[267] There are studies not necessarily with this, but another substance, clomophine.

[268] And look, while I'm cautioning people to be careful about comparing different substances, The commonality between chlomaphene, which there are multiple clinical studies on, because it is a proof of use to be distributed to humans, and oral tyrrina ball is they're both chlorinated.

[269] So they both contain a chlorine atom on the molecule.

[270] And there is a recently published study on chlomaphene and its excretion rates.

[271] Again, for those at home that want to look it up, the study was published in the Endocrine Society publication, its peer review.

[272] The name of it is H .P .T. access effects and urinary detection following clomaphene administration and males.

[273] So what they did is they basically, you know, got a group of males, gave them a one -month cycle of chlomaphene, you know, I think 25 milligrams a day, and then had them get off and then continue to look at their urine up to 261 days after.

[274] And what you saw and what you see in this study is that pulsing effect.

[275] So, you know, I'm looking at some of the study subjects here.

[276] Subject one, on day 121 still showed 147 picagrams of chlomaphene.

[277] Day 128 showed 174 picagrams.

[278] Day 135 shows nothing.

[279] He's below the minimum reporting limit.

[280] And then day 149, he's back up to 236.

[281] There are one, two, three, four, five, six out of, I think, 12 subjects in that study that showed this pulsing effect of this chlorinated substance coming and going.

[282] Again, you know, it's different than oral terenobal, but it has that common factor of being chlorinated.

[283] In this study, they do talk about a fat tissue called the, let me look this up and make sure I got this right, adipose tissue.

[284] This is fat that surrounds the internal organs.

[285] It's one of the last things that the body burns when it's going, you know, starving itself and going to fat, it protects those organs.

[286] But, yeah, you look at these, you know, extreme weight gains and cuts that the UFC athlete goes through.

[287] I don't think you're going to find possibly another human subject anywhere that goes through putting weight on.

[288] Other than Olympic wrestling.

[289] Maybe that I don't think Olympic wrestling matches with an MMA fighter goes through, at least.

[290] in my experience over these three or four years, talking to those in the Olympic world.

[291] I think we're at the extreme, and it's something obviously we've talked about before.

[292] We're trying to curtail.

[293] But, you know, there's clearly never been a study for anybody who dehydrates and rehydrates themselves to the extent that some of our athletes do.

[294] You could never find there would never be anybody with any ethics that would support a study because some of that dehydration exceeds world health organization standards.

[295] So there's no studies out there, you know, on this stuff.

[296] But clearly, you know, looking from afar, I'd say that it likely has some impact over what's being released by this adipose tissue.

[297] We should certainly talk about that in the future, about the weight cutting aspect of it.

[298] So but this adipose tissue loss at extreme weight cuts could potentially be the reason why this stuff is excreting itself.

[299] It's definitely a theory out there.

[300] What about microdosing?

[301] So here's the thing with microdosing.

[302] So, microdosing is done with endogenous substances.

[303] Only?

[304] Well, I mean, someone could try it with something else, but the reason you microdose with endogenous substances is they're already produced in the body.

[305] Right.

[306] So the theory of, okay, I'm going to microdose oral turinibol.

[307] Well, oral tyrantibol is still producing these short -term and long -term metabolites.

[308] In theory, whether you're taking 100 milligrams or 1 milligram of oral terranibal, Torinibol, those excretion rates of those metabolites are still going to be consistent.

[309] They're going to be in a much smaller level.

[310] Is there a way to bypass those excretion rates?

[311] Is there a way to mask that in some way?

[312] I'm not aware of any.

[313] I suppose.

[314] Go ahead.

[315] I'm sorry.

[316] The only study we have is Gregory Retrovertich.

[317] That's it.

[318] But, you know, just taking it from a common sense approach, it's certainly, you know, those that know about microgrossing know that you microdose with endogenous substances, things that are already peering in the body.

[319] So your body knows what to do with them.

[320] Knows what to do and you're fooling, you know, not only are these metabolizing and there's no metabolites of them, but you could also be fooling the biological passport.

[321] That's the concern, I think, and why people microdose.

[322] So you saw it as looking not only testing for specific substances, but are testosterone to epitestosterone ratios going up?

[323] They're looking at blood values, how many young red blood cells, how many mature red blood cells.

[324] So microdosing in those two areas wouldn't set off a lot.

[325] alarms in the biological passport world.

[326] I've never heard personally of microdosing of exogenous substances that are not found in the body.

[327] Microdosing in my understanding is done with things that are endogenous.

[328] And again, for people that are not familiar with this terminology, we're just talking about microdosing, performance enhancing drugs.

[329] Because microdosing in today's world is a very common thing with mushrooms and LSD and a lot of things.

[330] Right.

[331] I mean, I saw a ton of microdosing in the cycling world.

[332] that was testosterone, EPO, HGH, all those natural occurring in the body.

[333] And so they don't produce any really red flag metabolites?

[334] If you do them at very, very small levels, the parent will clear quickly, not produce any metabolites and will not throw off the biological passport analysis.

[335] Is there, I mean, when Victor Conte came out with Clear and all that stuff with Balco, they were fooling people.

[336] Is it, I mean, one of the things we've talked about before is that it's a constant race to try to keep up with more advanced cheaters.

[337] It is.

[338] And you know what's interesting in this?

[339] I mean, if I would have talked to you, and maybe the first time we did talk a couple years ago, it's come a long way from them.

[340] But clearly, if I would have talked to you 15, 16, 17 years ago when I got my start in the anti -doping world, I would have told you definitively the testing is way behind, you know, what's being used out there.

[341] they were testing able to test to multiple nanogram limits that's as far down as we can go now they can go down to single digit picogram there's another professional sports league out there that recently had a one picogram M3 metabolite case I mean do the math coming down from you know four or five nanograms which used to be the lower limit now to one picogram 10 ,000 20 ,000 times I am almost under the theory that the pendulum has swung maybe a little bit too far in the other direction.

[342] And that certainly is part of my job to the UFC.

[343] Look, I want to catch every intentional cheater that's out there.

[344] I want to make sure we have a rock solid program, use all the latest and greatest techniques to do it.

[345] But I also want to keep an eye on it to make sure it's being administrated fairly.

[346] And when you're getting down to detection of one, you know, single -digit picograms, I have a concern that what kind of level of sensitivity are we talking about?

[347] Are we going to talk about environmental contamination where you walk, you know, through a room and somebody has just opened a container of something and there's, you know, minuscule powders in the air?

[348] There are documented cases that some of the regularly prescribed prescription drugs, specifically diuretics, are getting in water supplies in some areas.

[349] areas.

[350] You know, you get a lot of old people on them that flush their old pills down the toilet.

[351] There's documented cases of it getting into the water supply and being detectable at that peak of gram level.

[352] So you've got to be really, really careful about that.

[353] And I think, you know, this case exemplifies that USADA and really the World Anti -Doping Agency, world and community are aware of that.

[354] You know, with greater sensitivity in testing, in my opinion, becomes you know makes greater responsibility to be objective and look fairly at what really we're doing here when we're detecting in that small amount but this this test of johns where he's testing for the same level of picograms today as he was in july of 2017 is it safe to say that this is unprecedented repeat that again that john's test for the same levels of peakograms of these metabolites in 2018 that he was testing for in 2017.

[355] This is unprecedented.

[356] No, the answer is no. It's not.

[357] It's not.

[358] So maybe unprecedented in the UFC program, but what the United States Antidopiagasy did over these last five or six months is they reached out to the science community outside the scope of the UFC.

[359] They reached out to other professional sports organizations.

[360] They reached out to other WADA laboratories.

[361] And what they were seeing was multiple instances.

[362] of this pulsing effect where over time you would see a reading right the next test it would go away and the next time you'd see that reading again maybe back up to or even above this much time was correct yes so and you see that in the clomophine study here too i mean almost 260 they stopped the study what it was still appearing in picogram levels in some subjects and they stopped the study at 261 days and you see those numbers i was reading to you see this one subject at one seven seven 74.

[363] He's negative the next time.

[364] And then he pops up to two in the 200s after.

[365] So it's actually more than the time before.

[366] Again, apples and oranges, different substances, but the commonality here is chlorinated substance.

[367] Chlorine based.

[368] So is it safe to say that this is an emerging science and that we're still learning and understanding this as we go along?

[369] Absolutely.

[370] It's still very young.

[371] Look, the first, you know, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were the, the, the, the, the, established the first drug testing laboratory by Dr. Catlin.

[372] So really, you know, in the scope of science, going back to the earliest days then, you're talking about, you know, what, 30 years, 30, 35 years.

[373] Again, when I started off in this 16 or 17 years, the science still wasn't good.

[374] They were unable to detect anything in the picogram level.

[375] Again, for reference, very interesting.

[376] So the WADA, the World Anti -Doping agencies, accredits lab.

[377] laboratories across the world.

[378] And they have certain standards that those laboratories must meet in order to retain that accreditation and keep that accreditation.

[379] So they have a technical document called the minimum required performance levels of their laboratories.

[380] So what they tell the laboratories is you must detect these substances down to this amount.

[381] If you can't get them down to this amount, then you can't have an accreditation from WADA.

[382] So the class of substances that oral tyrrina ball would be in, which would be other anabolic agents, the required minimum level that they must detect to is only two nanograms.

[383] So look, WADA even says, as long as you can get to two nanograms, you can retain our accreditation.

[384] Well, what's happening is an arms race in these laboratories.

[385] They're saying, well, two is the minimum standard, but I can get down further.

[386] and you know these are private entities that you know are looking for for customers so to be able to reach out and say well even though water tells us two is as low as we need to go we can go down to one picogram i think in a sense maybe you need to slow the reins on that a little bit that we're getting too far and too sensitive of a level of detection when it comes to implementing a fair program because you can't determine where a one picogram came from you could be breathing again contaminating air, drinking contaminated water.

[387] It gets real dangerous when you get down that low.

[388] Now, how does this reflect on past suspensions?

[389] This is, when you deal with someone, let's bring up Frank Mear, for example.

[390] Didn't Frank Mear also test for oral turinabal?

[391] Okay.

[392] I want to get back to Frank Mear, but let's go back to John.

[393] And this instance and why Usada has come out and said, look, this is not a violation.

[394] So if you go to the WADA, the World Anti -Doping Code, there's a section.

[395] 10 .7 .4 .1.

[396] Our UFC program basically mirrors that.

[397] And we're bringing that up on the screen there.

[398] So for purposes of imposing sanctions under 10 .7, an anti -doping rule violation will only be considered a second violation if the anti -doping organization can establish the athlete or other person committed the second anti -doping rule violation after the athlete or other person received notice pursuant to Article 7, etc. this is what's known as a double jeopardy clause.

[399] Right.

[400] Can't be sanctioned.

[401] A guy test positive for something.

[402] And if he's test positive for the exact same substance that is still in his system a year later or whatever the amount of time is, you don't include that as a new positive test.

[403] One more thing has to happen.

[404] Science has to determine that there hasn't been a readministration.

[405] So test positive for the same substance.

[406] And science says, based on all the numbers, we see there's no evidence of any readministration.

[407] And the non -evidence of the re -administration is the lack of short -term and medium -term metabolites.

[408] Bingo, never, ever in John's.

[409] Is there an issue, though, that this is only one test, that Gregory Wichenko's test is the only study that showed that these medium and short -term metabolites exist?

[410] It's the only study, but I think then if there's only one study, you have to go to anecdotal evidence, right?

[411] Why don't we just do studies on UFC employees?

[412] because oral terranibol to take oral taranibol.

[413] He'll do it.

[414] Oral Tarinaball is illegal to distribute In any country throughout the world It's illegal.

[415] Every country.

[416] But I thought Mexico they just let you do whatever you want to do.

[417] I don't know.

[418] Maybe we can look into that, but Shelby may be up for that.

[419] That's the reason for living there.

[420] I have a problem with that in that we're relying on one study.

[421] This seems to me to be like a critical thing that could affect, I mean, we're hoping and we're putting faith in this study that this is the only way that these metabolites express themselves.

[422] Is it possible that what, that these, like you see with the pulsing effect, that you see positive effects and negative, or positive results and negative results, that these short -term and medium -term metabolites don't always express themselves, and that what we're considering a long -term metabolite could in fact just be a metabolite.

[423] Yeah, I mean, I guess it's possible, but are you going to sanction an athlete again because, you know, potentially it's possible in the theory or the universe, you can't do that.

[424] Let me read to you real quick what these experts came out at in terms of readministration.

[425] So Dr. Daniel Eichner runs the Salt Lake City.

[426] It's called the Sports Medicine Research Testing Laboratory or Smyrtle.

[427] They're one of two water accredited laboratories in the United States, the other one being at UCLA.

[428] Again, one of the most respected minds in anti -doping Ph .D. chemist.

[429] His answer in terms of readministration was this.

[430] And you very rarely see scientists at his level talk in absolutes.

[431] In absolutes.

[432] There you go.

[433] And here he says, there is no evidence that DHCMT has been readministered.

[434] That's in writing to us.

[435] So very definitive on that.

[436] Usada is science director.

[437] Now, Daniel is independent even of Usada.

[438] So those who criticize, hey, Usada's in bed with the UFC.

[439] Daniel Eichner doesn't work for Usada.

[440] He runs an independent laboratory.

[441] Usada sends samples there.

[442] The NFL sends samples there.

[443] Major League Baseball send samples there.

[444] The NCAA.

[445] He's independent.

[446] owns his own laboratory.

[447] Usada also put out a letter to us in writing upon careful consideration of the very low concentration of the DHCMT long -term metabolite Mr. Jones's sample and taking into account the human pharmacinetic characteristics of this particular long -term anabolic steroid metabolite based on data to which Usada has access to and in consultation with scientific experts, some of whose opinions are enclosed.

[448] those USADA has concluded consistent with prior residual amounts detected in Mr. Jones sample that the presence of DHCMT, long -term metabolite, is consistent with residual amounts from exposure prior to July 28, 2017.

[449] Look, I'm not an expert.

[450] I don't profess to be.

[451] My background's in finance and accounting.

[452] I traced the money back in the old days, but I know who those experts are out there in the world.

[453] and these are them.

[454] They're, by putting these things in writing, putting their reputations on the line now and forever going forward, they're never going to do something like that because, you know, the UFC pays you saw it to administer our program or because John Jones is, you know, a popular fighter and they want to see him fight this weekend.

[455] That's just not the way this world works.

[456] Of course.

[457] In fact, it works the opposite way.

[458] There would be a great benefit if they could catch him cheating.

[459] Absolutely.

[460] And, you know, historically, experts like this are very very conservative when it comes to talking in absolutes like this they don't normally do it in all fairness the real question is guys like you and me because we are UFC employees so yes I get that argument of course you know and I saw that left and right that hey Jeff and Joe are paid by the UFC of course they're going to come out in this way but look all these things that I'm reciting today I would never do that in regards to cheating I wouldn't either.

[461] I side with the UFC on a lot of things because I support the sport and I want to excel.

[462] I don't side ever with cheating.

[463] If I think that there's some way somehow that someone is given an unfair advantage and it's just somehow being covered up, I would rather not work for them.

[464] Joe, my last 17 years of my career, my, you know, everything that I've worked for is to protect the rights of clean athletes and to eradicate cheating from the sport.

[465] I can't tell you how strongly.

[466] I feel about that.

[467] Sports giving me everything in my life.

[468] My dad was a high school basketball coach.

[469] It paid for my college and scholarships.

[470] At least the good characteristics in me, I can all trace directly to sports.

[471] And entering into the equation, the issues of breaking the rules, the issues of the health and safety aspects when you have young.

[472] And I talk to many parents whose kids use steroids because they saw the professional athletes doing.

[473] Entering that into the body when your hormonal levels are already out of control is very, very dangerous, both short and long term.

[474] I can't tell you how passionate I am about this issue and those out there that are saying that I'm corrupt and my reputation is out the window.

[475] I would never, ever in a million years.

[476] You can't listen to those people.

[477] I mean, obviously you have, but you can't listen to those people because they want to find things wrong.

[478] One of the things that I've said about you is you're a guy who loves to catch you.

[479] people cheating.

[480] You like it.

[481] You enjoy it.

[482] No, that's not true, man. You do.

[483] Come on.

[484] If someone is cheating and you catch them, tell me you don't like that.

[485] In the UFC program, now with what we've established here, absolutely.

[486] Back in the old days, and we've talked about this, look, when you had in baseball or in cycling, no testing going on, literally the organizations were looking in the other direction.

[487] I've often said, look, I don't agree with what they did, but there's a portion of me. And that's why I think a lot of these athletes respected me and shared that information.

[488] There's a portion of me that said, I don't agree with what you did.

[489] I'd like to think I wouldn't made the same decision, but I damn well understand why you did this.

[490] You're fighting for millions of dollars in contracts.

[491] You know your teammates are doing it.

[492] You know your competitors are doing it.

[493] And you know your professional sports organization doesn't give a shit because of the weakness of the testing program or total lack thereof.

[494] So in instances like that, I never came away saying, that guy's an idiot or an hour.

[495] asshole for her choosing.

[496] I came away saying, I kind of get why he did it.

[497] If I was 21 or 22 years old and immature, I may have made the same decision.

[498] Now, coming to our program here, where you have an organization that cares very much that spends multi -million dollars a year.

[499] This program has done nothing but costs the UFC money.

[500] It costs us money in how we implement the program.

[501] It costs us money on canceling fights.

[502] Anybody who thinks moving this fight to California is that a financial benefit to the UFC is crazy.

[503] We're taking a bath on this one.

[504] People really do need to understand that the UFC decided themselves, they self -imposed USADA's sanctioning of fights.

[505] Correct.

[506] Nobody forced us to do that.

[507] So this is a this was a big step in the right direction of trying to make the sport cleaner because we recognize that first of all, there was some legal stuff with the testosterone replacement therapy that just threw everything out of whack.

[508] Right.

[509] Where it was essentially it was sanctioned cheating.

[510] I mean, let's be honest about what that was.

[511] It was clearly, in my understanding, being manipulated.

[512] Yes.

[513] Very easy to manipulate when you get permission to use any prohibited substance like that.

[514] And we went from that to unbelievably strict protocols.

[515] And now what you're seeing is, you're seeing, first of all, we saw a radical change in the physiques of some fighters where we did have some suspicions and those suspicions, at least in my eyes, have been confirmed and now we're seeing the good side of this with what in your estimation might have been moved over into a position where okay now now it's getting a little bit ridiculous in terms of like what we can detect and what is what is causing fights to be canceled exactly so interestingly enough the world anti -doping agency or water their next code revision is 2021 and so they regularly put out, hey, what are the issues going forward that we want to address?

[516] And one of the major issues is potentially establishing thresholds for these low -level substances that keep appearing, DHCMT being one of them, Osterine being one of them.

[517] And so the idea that WADA is looking at and has a working group of worldwide experts is, hey, if something that gets reported back in under 50 picograms, all the evidence is showing more.

[518] More likely than not, this is from a very low -level contaminant issue.

[519] We've never seen an issue of a microdosing or an intentional use that's reached that level.

[520] Why are the labs even reporting at quantities lower than 50 picograms or 100 picagrams?

[521] I think very soon they're going to come out with a recommendation.

[522] We are going to adopt that before 2021.

[523] Once that working group, and we're in communication with them, comes up with those recommendations, you'll see it implemented first in the UFC program.

[524] Again, I've always said, fairness, due process in a program is just as important of the strength and comprehensiveness of that program.

[525] You'll lose faith in your athletes.

[526] You could have the strongest loophole -free program in the world, but you start implementing things unfairly.

[527] You'll lose faith just as much as if you had a bunch of loopholes in the program.

[528] It's got to be fair.

[529] Are you aware of the female skier that tested positive because of lip balm?

[530] I think yeah it's vaguely recall about that what was someone else used a lip balm before her no no no no it was a a lip balm for sunburn uh -huh it was for sunburnt lips and it had some ridiculously small trace amount was it austerine see if you give her name is uh joe berg I'm trying to remember her name well there was the the cocaine kissing defense which actually won an arbitration so something similar somebody tested positive for you know low level metabolites of cocaine and basically said look you know hey whether that was good or not but um you know the arbitrator bought it and the science shows hey that that is a possibility the detection levels are so low if you kiss somebody who had just done cocaine they're now able to detect at those levels in the person that kissed that person that makes sense do you find this woman yeah this one there's a doping label on the label which is why they gave her a penalty apparently.

[531] Oh, I see.

[532] Okay.

[533] What is the, who the fuck's reading labels on lip balm now?

[534] You know what I mean?

[535] See, that's how crazy it's gotten.

[536] I mean, all our athletes know when they're using a creatine or a protein or whatever, I think most of them are pretty careful right now.

[537] But to tell them, hey, you need to read your lip balm and your deodorant.

[538] I mean, what level are we getting to here in these levels of detection?

[539] So she, 21, nine -year -old star of Norway's powerhouse school.

[540] quad of skiing cross -country skiing tested positive for an anabolic agent listed in the contents of a treatment for sunburn um this could be similar in some ways to what chad mendes tested positive for for something for psoriasis correct sat chad mendes has obvious psoriasis you can see it on his body he's talked about it pretty openly and he used some sort of a cream and accepted his penalty wasn't aware that this cream had something some type of a steroid into it Yeah, I'd seen him publicly state that.

[541] Now, he chose not to present a defense or go at arbitration, so I haven't seen anything in detail to give you, you know, a knowledgeable opinion on that.

[542] Yeah, he did.

[543] So let's get back to the Frank Meere case.

[544] Frank Meier tested positive.

[545] Was it also All too?

[546] Also, same thing, long -term metabolite of World Turinibol.

[547] Here's the difference.

[548] Frank Meir, the same as John Jones, his first time through, was sanctioned.

[549] John didn't get off the first time.

[550] that showed up in his system.

[551] He got, you know, he was looking at potential four years, went to arbitration, presented evidence, enacted some other clauses in the policy that reduced his sanction.

[552] What does that mean?

[553] Well, one of them was substantial assistance where he assisted Usada in some way, shape, or form, and he got a reduction for doing that.

[554] Assisted in what way?

[555] So I don't know.

[556] And this is the exact reason why I do this.

[557] So I insulate myself from that interaction between usada and the athlete they are the sole adjudicator in this they do not you know get me on the phone say hey we're thinking about going this way they adjudicate completely in a vacuum and you're just so people know your title is safety health and safety athlete health and performance vice president of athlete health and performance yeah so you no longer work for usada i've never worked for usada that's that's a big misconception a lot of our fighters think that i've never worked for Usada.

[558] I was a federal agent for 22 and a half years.

[559] The latter part of my career got involved with all these PED distribution cases.

[560] 2015, Lorenzo Fertita and Dana White through a mutual friend contacted me and said, hey, would you come out and kind of talk to us?

[561] We're contemplating, maybe putting our own program together.

[562] We've had some recent high -profile positives.

[563] So I came out to Vegas, talk with them, and a week later I get a phone call asking if I want to come work for them and kind of implement this new program, but I've never been an employee of USADA.

[564] Okay, so that's good to know, because that's been stated by some public figures, that you used to work for USADA, and now you work for the UFC, and that you're a shill.

[565] That's one of my favorite words.

[566] So you never worked for USADA.

[567] You brought USADA to the UFC, or communicated with USADA and facilitated this agreement?

[568] Correct.

[569] So I never worked for USADA.

[570] I did work very closely with USADA.

[571] So USADA, when I first started these series of investigations back in 2002, look, I knew all about how to work a heroin distribution organization, a cocaine distribution organization, methamphetamine.

[572] But when it came to performance -enhancing drugs, it was no class that myself or really any other federal agent or law enforcement agent goes through surrounding distribution of performance -enhancing drugs.

[573] So I was examining the discarded garbage of Balco every week when they put it out to the curb, began seeing notes, wrappers, all these substances.

[574] I had no idea what these things were.

[575] I didn't know the difference between testosterone, epitestosterone, erythropoitin, HCH, I knew nothing.

[576] So what I did is I figured out who those experts were, who were the people that could very quickly get me up to speed on what I was looking at.

[577] Dr. Katlin, who ran the U .S. UCLA Olympic lab was one of the first, and he started, you know, kind of walking me through this.

[578] He put me in touch with Usada, and, you know, they began educating me as well.

[579] So over the course of those investigations, I got a lot from them in terms of educating on these substances.

[580] They were bringing some of their cooperating witnesses to me, and then we go off and running on criminal investigations, but never worked for them.

[581] So Usada, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they would work would be very compartmentalized like they would not specifically communicate with you on all the details of this correct and they don't now i mean that's the independence aspect i don't as these deliberations are going on what they're looking at i don't know but cooperation just for me to be frank would in my eyes would mean that something was done purposely illegally and this person had some knowledge of purpose purposeful illegal activity and that they would somehow communicate this to facilitate some sort of catching of someone involved in a criminal act or an act of cheating.

[582] Yeah, that would make sense to me too.

[583] So that would be what we're talking about.

[584] Usada would allow John a shorter suspension if he actively participated in helping them catch people that were cheating.

[585] That's the understanding.

[586] That would be implied.

[587] That would be implied.

[588] I don't know to what level that was done.

[589] I don't know if it was that or if it was, hey here's how this drug works in more general here's up i don't know what it was i purposely be that would mean that john would have to know about cheating if you're saying like this this is how this drug works this is how i used it i mean this would he would that would that would mean his initial defense would have to be thrown out the window because it wasn't an accident well i i mean i don't know about that if he knew something separate from you know that he wasn't doing but someone else yeah and again i don't i don't want anybody to reach that conclusion i have no idea what his substantial assistance entailed none.

[590] Right.

[591] But that's a slippery slope.

[592] It is a slippery slope.

[593] And look, transparency is important in any program, but, you know, only to a certain level.

[594] Look, if you were transparent about what everyone's, you know, cooperation or substantial assistant was and the whole world knew about it, you're never going to get anybody after that coming in and, and cooperating.

[595] I saw this definitely on the criminal side with, you know, informants.

[596] You don't.

[597] that's not something that's that you want to be transparent about or disclose right but there's going to be a bunch of people that have a real issue with that the idea that john jones you know one of the greatest fires of all time is actually working as an informant i mean it's it's listed in the in the you know in the McLaren's ruling that that was one of the reasons for the the mitigating factor and the reduction but i don't again joe i'm telling you i have any information about it just leave that alone nothing about it it's been stated we know what it is Okay.

[598] Or we know that it's a thing.

[599] When it comes to John's initial test where he was sanctioned and was suspended for a determined period of time, Frank Mear also was sanctioned and for a determined period of time as well.

[600] He was two years.

[601] He was two years.

[602] John was shorter than that because John cooperated and a bunch of other details.

[603] Two things.

[604] He not only cooperated, he went to arbitration and put on a defense.

[605] He put on a defense that, look, the evidence here shows no intentional ingestion of it.

[606] In fact, McLaren gave him a further reduction based on there was no evidence that this was intentionally done.

[607] Frank Mear didn't put on any, he had every right to go to arbitration, put on his own offense, didn't do that.

[608] What about Josh Barnett?

[609] Josh Barnett, you know, a completely different set of facts.

[610] His came from a contaminated supplement.

[611] It was a different substance.

[612] He went to an arbitration hearing.

[613] the arbitrator ruled with Josh and said, yep, based on where we are now, based on the care and effort that you took, you're right.

[614] You deserve to have time served at the time of that arbitration.

[615] So again, I think that's a good example of the checks and balances in place here.

[616] You've got me overseeing the program, taking a look at how these things come out.

[617] You've got the ability from the athlete to go to McLaren's group and judge the set of facts.

[618] And in that case, McLaren's group said, Ed Usada, I think maybe overreached a little bit here, and I believe Josh and Josh is, you know, basically time served.

[619] So, you know, you want to see, you want to see them get it perfect right every time, but, you know, and the reality in the real world is that doesn't necessarily happen, and that's why you have these checks and balances available.

[620] Josh Barnett's take on the matter is that they tried to paint him as guilty even though he was not, and that he feels like he definitely got a bad deal, and that he was.

[621] labeled as someone who was taking this substance.

[622] He was suspended for a long period of time while he was going through this.

[623] And although he was found not guilty, that he feels like not enough emphasis was put into establishing that he was not guilty and that, you know, he feels like they chased him down over something that he didn't do.

[624] Yeah.

[625] I mean, well, here's what he did do is he used a supplement that if he would have listened to anything that we educate on, that Usada sends out regular reminders, our fighters are required on a quarterly basis to go through videos and their whereabouts filing that deals with these issues.

[626] If he would have followed any of that advice when it came to his supplement choices, he would have never chosen the supplement he used.

[627] I, you know, when I heard about that supplement and what was on the label and how it was marketed, I said, okay, well, that's likely the candidate of where it came from.

[628] Yeah.

[629] So, I mean, the analysis would be, hey, you know, that pool, be careful.

[630] There's sharks, swimming in that pool they can eat you and the person jumps in the water anyway saying like I didn't want to get eaten by a shark but a shark comes up and ate them it's like hey we told you that this was the case you didn't follow that now there also needs to be a differentiation between someone who's intentional cheating intentionally cheating and someone that's just you know makes a naive supplement choice there there needs to be a differentiation between that and there was in that case Josh didn't get, you know, the full penalty of what was, what that substance, you know, would have rendered.

[631] But he did have to go through a long period of time where he was unable to fight.

[632] He did, but, you know, again, he had the prohibited substance in his body.

[633] You saw it has to look at, hey, even though you didn't do that on purpose, did that give you a performance enhancing benefit?

[634] Did it allow you to recover a little bit better?

[635] Did it make you a little bit stronger?

[636] and you know that's why those strict liability provisions are in there otherwise people would just take these prohibited supplements and say oh i didn't know exactly it was an accident exactly and meanwhile they're getting a benefit exactly so they have to have some sort of penalty in place i think so yeah now i also think again there needs to be a differentiation between the intentional and non -intentional and we do have that in our policy there are definitely mitigating factors available in our policy that if you didn't do thing on purpose you're not you know you're not you're not sanction is high.

[637] Tim Means is a great example there.

[638] So Tim Means used a relatively benign supplement.

[639] It was a creotin.

[640] Cretin, you know, generally doesn't have an issue as opposed like testosterone booster supplements.

[641] We tell our athletes stay away from anything marketing as a testosterone booster.

[642] It's one of the most common with contaminants or purposeful spikings.

[643] Tim Means uses a creatine.

[644] It had osterine in a very small amount.

[645] We found it in there.

[646] Osterine is a two -year sanction.

[647] He got six months.

[648] You know, so back relatively quickly.

[649] So I think that's...

[650] Was the same thing with Yoel Romero?

[651] So, correct.

[652] Yoel Romero used a natural diuretic product that had a SARM in it.

[653] In all these cases, not only does the prohibited substance need to show up and what the athlete has says they've used already, but to protect against making sure the athlete isn't purposely spiking it.

[654] Usada will go out on their own, on the market, independently procure hopefully the same lot of product.

[655] And in the case of Yoel and Tim, they were able to do that, test it completely independently of the athlete, determine what level the prohibited substances in that.

[656] Based on the interview with the athlete of how much did you use, when's the last time you used it relative to this test, do the science calculations just to make sure an athlete's not saying, well, I know this creotin is spiked with osterine, so I'm going to go use osterine, and then I have a built -in excuse when I test positive for osterine in order to be able to match contaminant levels with what's being excreted in the urine.

[657] You would literally have to have Ph .D. chemistry degree, and I'm not aware of any.

[658] Our athletes having that would be very, very difficult to do that.

[659] And so these detection levels, again, we're talking about nanograms.

[660] We're not talking about large quantities that would indicate picograms.

[661] Okay.

[662] Now, why was this moved from Vegas to California?

[663] And why did the California State Athletic Commission, why did they accept this fight taking place here, and why did Vegas say no to it?

[664] So internally, UFC -wise, we first, in fact, Donna, Marcellini, who you know who works with me, shout out to Donna.

[665] Exactly.

[666] We're a two -person shot.

[667] and the woman's a hawks, one of the hardest workers I know.

[668] So she's...

[669] She's awesome.

[670] She's taking a look at something that we have access to called the Clearing House, and it's basically a recording of all the tests on our athletes.

[671] So we can get on there.

[672] Somebody says, hey, how many times was John tested last quarter?

[673] We can get on there and pull that up.

[674] The public also has access to our testing records, not with the specificity that the Clearing House has, but the public can get on, and you saw it on a weekly basis.

[675] updates how many tests and athletes done.

[676] So there's some of these, some guys out there on the internet from the day one of the program have kept track of what week their numbers tick up.

[677] So you can go find spreadsheets on the internet, at least from a weekly basis of when our athletes were tested and how many times every week.

[678] God bless those dorks.

[679] Crazy, huh?

[680] So the clearinghouse program is very specific.

[681] We can get on there and see the actual date of the collection.

[682] And next to that, we see negative, positive, or pending.

[683] So Donna came to me late November, early December, saying, hey, I'm looking at, you know, John's tests, and I'm seeing pending still back from, I think it was maybe August, September.

[684] You think something's going on here?

[685] And, of course, I'm like, okay, well, he's fighting pretty soon.

[686] I hope not.

[687] But let me reach out to Usada.

[688] So I reach out to them.

[689] They said, we're working on something.

[690] We're, you know, conducting a study.

[691] We're talking other professional sports leagues.

[692] We're talking to the laboratories out there and don't have an answer for you.

[693] now, but stand by.

[694] So I think it was December 6th, they sent a letter to us, and they sent a letter to the Nevada State Athletic Commission saying, just so you're aware, over the last six months, early in this six months, we've seen a reemergence of this long -term metabolite in John's samples.

[695] So when was this?

[696] So this was early December, December 6th.

[697] We and the Nevada Athletic Commission were notified.

[698] You were notified, but the 10th.

[699] was from previous?

[700] So the test, these tests, um, covered from August through November.

[701] Okay.

[702] So there's more than one test.

[703] Several of them.

[704] Oh, so more than one test showed this metabolite.

[705] So what they said was August 9th, negative, August 29th, eight pica grams, September 18th.

[706] Eight.

[707] September 18th.

[708] So, I mean, there's a, there's a good, so he's negative on the 9th.

[709] 20 days later so inside the 22 day window he shows an 8 picogram no short -term metabolites no long -term no parent no medium no medium I'm sorry no medium only long -term thank you um we then go to the 18th of september 19 picograms and then that's followed by four negative tests September 21st October 2nd October 11th and November 14th so it's At this point, late November, early December, Usada says, okay, we've done our studying.

[710] Those two low levels in August are residual.

[711] There's no evidence of any readministration based on lack of short and medium term and parent.

[712] Based on our consultation with other leagues, with these labs that are seeing this, we're calling this, this would be double jeopardy if we did him again.

[713] All evidence points to him.

[714] This is something that should be really emphasized because there's a lot of people that don't understand this.

[715] This is not just this one test.

[716] These are many tests that have been done over the course of John's suspension and then ultimately relicensing that are showing this exact same metabolite at a very similar level that, according to previous tests, specifically on chlomaphene, that this could be this pulsing result of existing and not existing.

[717] But this is not indicative in any way that can be provable of microdosing.

[718] Correct.

[719] And not only that, but this is over, we're talking about this being over long term, long periods of time, many months.

[720] Yes.

[721] Okay.

[722] And consistent numbers over many months.

[723] Yes.

[724] So, and again, going back to what one expert, Dr. Bauer said, you've got to be careful, what you're talking about single, double picograms.

[725] And you see some variance.

[726] You got to be careful about saying, well, it went from 9 to 18.

[727] That means readministration.

[728] No, it's in exact science at that level.

[729] The Wada lab.

[730] This is a non -threshold substance.

[731] So all's WADA requires them to say to report back to WADA, positive or negative.

[732] They're not required to quantify.

[733] However, these Wada labs have also realized there's an issue when you're getting done to Pekagrams.

[734] So what they're doing is going back after reporting the positive, hey, let's see if we can estimate what this level is.

[735] It's in exact science at Pekagram quantities, in my understanding, to estimate what those levels are.

[736] can see some variations.

[737] So Nevada is unwilling to sanction the fight based on all this information?

[738] So they get the initial notice that we got also, I think it was December 6th saying, look, there was an issue in August.

[739] These long -term metabolites reappeared again, but we've since had four negative tests.

[740] We don't believe that the August reappearance is a readministration.

[741] There's no sanction here.

[742] Nevada, you don't even have jurisdiction over the August test.

[743] Again, keep in mind, these are UFC tests.

[744] Nevada doesn't mandate it.

[745] But Nevada says, look, closer to a fight, we do take jurisdiction.

[746] We will adopt these Usada tests.

[747] So Usada didn't need to notify.

[748] They thought, out of an abundance of caution, let's let Nevada know that this issue exists.

[749] God damn, Usada.

[750] What the fuck.

[751] But hey, wait, that's all good.

[752] Nevada gets this.

[753] I talk with them.

[754] They're like, whoa, this is this is concerning but we don't see anything within our jurisdiction here so i certainly hope that no subsequent tests show up positive because that could be an issue and sure enough usada collects a sample from john on 12 -9 they expedited the results because they knew a fight was coming up and they do that now when fights are closed or the collections are done close to a fight and here you know he pulses back up to uh you know between 60 and 80 picagrams so Nevada gets this, this was last week, man, the days have run together for me. So, a week ago Friday, we have in Bob Bennett, who's the executive director.

[755] Well, I'm a big fan of.

[756] He's a great guy.

[757] I should say, I talked shit about Nevada, but I really love Bob.

[758] Former FBI agent, so we've got a ton of common.

[759] He's, he's, one of the reasons why it probably wasn't sanctioned in Nevada was because they're so by the book.

[760] I get angry because I wanted the fight to be in Nevada, but I understand Bob's position implicitly.

[761] So let me make clear what happened.

[762] Bob came in, Anthony Marnell, the chairman of the commission came in, and a couple of representatives from the Nevada Attorney General's office.

[763] So they are the ones that prosecute and, you know, cases involving PED use that violates Nevada regs.

[764] So we share all this with them.

[765] Like this, like you did with me?

[766] Correct.

[767] Share it all with them.

[768] And look, there's some misconception out there.

[769] They did not say this fight's absolutely not happening next week.

[770] In fact, they, I think, were understanding these issues, but said, look, you know, optically, this doesn't look great.

[771] And we feel that out of an abundance of caution that we need to have a public hearing and be very transparent about this, because this is, this is some weird shit.

[772] This was last Friday.

[773] So we're eight days out from the fight.

[774] So, you know, we start talking about, hey, when can we potentially have this?

[775] And unfortunately, Christmas holiday, several of the commissioners weren't even in town.

[776] And basically what they said is, look, we will absolutely do this if you want us to.

[777] But likely that hearing would not be until today, Thursday or maybe tomorrow Friday.

[778] And, you know, Marnell's like, look, I'm starting to get my head around this, but I can't guarantee you that my other commissioners or me are going to come out the same way.

[779] So you're taking, you know, you're taking a chance here that we could say, well, we need more information.

[780] So basically, they were willing to listen to it.

[781] I think they were starting to wrap their heads around it, but didn't feel that they were up to speed enough on it.

[782] They didn't have the luxury that Andy Foster and California have.

[783] Remember, when John tested positive in July 2018, that fight was in California.

[784] because that fight was in California, California retained jurisdiction.

[785] They've had two very public hearings on John when they suspended his license, and most recently a week and a half ago when they reinstated his license.

[786] So Andy and the commission were very familiar with the world tournamentabal.

[787] They were very familiar with the long -term metabolite.

[788] And in fact, Andy was somewhat critical of Usada during the last hearing.

[789] He thought after looking at all the details, after reading, you know, McLaren's position that there was no evidence that this was done on purpose, he thought, man, maybe they went a little bit hard on him.

[790] And he stated that in that second hearing.

[791] So with the reemergence of the picogram quantity of this M3 long -term metabolite, Andy and the commission, unlike Nevada, didn't need to get up in a speed on it.

[792] They've already had two public hearings on John's issue.

[793] They were intimately familiar with, you know, some of these dynamics of this drug and the metabolites.

[794] And that's why he felt comfortable based on their familiarization with it and based on these written absolute statements by these experts.

[795] So there was no re -ingestion.

[796] One, and then the second thing, which we haven't covered, is these experts said, based on these low -level picograms, there's no performance -enhancing benefit.

[797] And that's an important point.

[798] Because if you would have told UFC, look, this is still remnants from a year and a half ago, but we can't rule out that he's not getting a performance enhancing benefit from it.

[799] Well, in that instance, I'll tell you, and, you know, I stand by this.

[800] I would leave this company if somebody told me otherwise.

[801] If there was any indication that there would be a benefit from him, even though it technically wasn't a violation, I'm not going to stand by, well, anybody licenses that guy to fight.

[802] Could it been, could this have been somehow or another mitigated by communicating these results to Nevada earlier?

[803] Well, we didn't announce the fight that John was going to fight in Nevada until October.

[804] But in October, could you have said, hey, look, here's this issue?

[805] Sure.

[806] Potentially.

[807] But the issue was, USADA hadn't come to that.

[808] They were in the middle of that point of consulting with other professional sports leagues with the other WADA labs, they hadn't reached their conclusion.

[809] Their science expert hadn't determined, hey, this is definitely residual, no performance financing.

[810] They were still going through that data at that point.

[811] So what they've told me is, look, we tried to hurry that along as fast as possible.

[812] We wanted to make sure that, you know, we went through this in very, very detailed and no stone left unturned.

[813] When did they reach this conclusion?

[814] So this was early December.

[815] So December 6th, that letter went out saying we've had these two low -level positive.

[816] It was back in August.

[817] Well, okay, but here we are.

[818] I mean, this is the end of December.

[819] Could this have been headed off at the past?

[820] Well, again, when Nevada first got notified, they thought, like, we were hoping, well, he's had four negative tests.

[821] So he's probably going to be negative going forward here, right?

[822] I mean, that's what, you know, the layperson would think, okay, he's probably out of the woods now.

[823] But, you know, again, getting back to what period of time is this in John's preparation?

[824] And if you look at some of these numbers and when these metabolites appear and disappear, in early August, John was preparing his defense for this arbitration.

[825] I think he had an idea based on talking to his attorney.

[826] He's like, hey, we got a pretty good shot here of some mitigating factors where this is potentially going to get reduced.

[827] So I think, you know, he starts to get a little bit motivated, gets in the gym, starts training again clearly in early December.

[828] That's a period of time when our fighters that close to a fight are bringing down that body weight, right?

[829] They're cutting body fat.

[830] They're losing, you know, a little bit of water.

[831] So it certainly seems to correlate these these pulsing, you know, effects with when.

[832] This is just theoretical, right?

[833] It is.

[834] It is.

[835] So this positive result was announced when?

[836] So a week ago yesterday.

[837] And this is Usada's announcement.

[838] Usada notifies us, the UFC, that always happens, and they notify if any commission has jurisdiction at this point, this close to a fight, Nevada has jurisdiction.

[839] So I get the call and you can imagine what's going through in my head.

[840] I mean, I've gotten so many of these calls now, I literally, for the first five or ten minutes, can bury my head in my hand and think through exactly how this thing's going to play out.

[841] and you know it's going to be hey Nevada's going to say wait a second what's going on here we need to root this out John's going to say Jesus Christ like what is going on in my life I can't get a fucking break I'm trying to be careful I even went through what DC how DC is going to react and he react he's going to be I fucking told you this was the case this guy's a cheater you know you sawdah's bullshit novitsky's bullshit all this stuff goes through my head in the first five or 10 minutes.

[842] How's Dana going to react?

[843] How's Hunter going to react when I have to go over to his office and explain this out to them?

[844] It played out exactly as I saw it.

[845] It's some of the worst days of my career when I get these calls.

[846] But, you know, everyone was notified and Nevada was in our office two days later.

[847] And again, I mean, there's been some criticism of them out there.

[848] I don't fault them.

[849] This is a complicated issue that optically doesn't look great and to do anything in a rush manner would be difficult.

[850] They did everything they could to afford us having a hearing.

[851] Problem was, it was just, it was too close to a fight.

[852] So essentially, to get this out, this is the issue with optics, right?

[853] Because you go on Twitter, everybody's calling them a cheat.

[854] Everybody's saying that, you know, anybody that sanctions this is you're sanctioning cheating.

[855] For someone to get an understanding of what this is like, it actually requires probably more than we've done now over the last hour and 15 minutes.

[856] Yeah, and I appreciate this for him.

[857] I mean, Dana and I went on SportsCenter and announced it a three -minute hit, and I came out of there going, absolutely, everyone in the world is going to say, this is bullshit.

[858] You can't.

[859] We're going to have a hard time doing this in two hours here.

[860] Yeah, most things.

[861] Yeah, you've got to delve into it, and you've also have to put your trust and reliance on these experts.

[862] They have an education, professional career of 20 to 25 years to come up with these absolutes.

[863] There's no one else in the world but maybe a dozen people that can come up with these conclusions.

[864] You do have to put your, you know, your faith in their background and their careers and their knowledge and education.

[865] And, you know, I read what those absolutes were, that there was no evidence of any re - ingestion.

[866] This is by multiple experts.

[867] And that John would not have retained any performance benefit based on these low -level picogram amounts.

[868] Well, I'm happy that we were going have this out there so people if they have the time if they're really that interested in it this is probably a more in -depth discussion of this than you're going to get anywhere else but i really wish we could have gotten something like this to nevada and nevada could have gone over this and looked at what i'm seeing what you're saying it seems to me that we could have just had some sort of a meeting and kept this fight in nevada and it would have saved everybody a lot of heartache yeah i mean i think things were pointing in that but there was no guarantees on that.

[869] Roll the dice, baby.

[870] It's Nevada.

[871] Come on.

[872] It's Vegas.

[873] You know, the other thing that was being looked at was fairness to these athletes.

[874] Really?

[875] You're going to put John and Gus, maybe more importantly, in a position where he doesn't know until two days or a day before whether this fight is happening or not.

[876] I mean, these, and not even mentioning the other fighters on the card.

[877] And look, you can talk to and I have to Sean and Mick and Dana and Hunter.

[878] All these fighters want to be on the big pay -per -views, they know the bigger the fight at the top of the card, the more eyes are on that fight.

[879] And when you have a spectacular fight in the first second fight on the card, if it's on a big pay -per -view with a giant fight at the top of it, that can propel your career.

[880] Your next fight, you could be fighting a main event on, you know, a fight pass and progress from there.

[881] So I think, you know, I think it's accurate to say that generally everybody wants these cards to be as big as possible.

[882] And when all the experts are telling us, A, 100 % this isn't a sanction, B, he's not retaining any performance enhancing benefits.

[883] I think, and clearly Dane and Hunter thought this, we have an obligation to do what we can do for fairness, for John, definitely, for Gus, for the rest of the card to try to make this fight happen.

[884] Going forward, is there any way we could ever prevent something like this from happening again with a similar situation in a place like Nevada?

[885] So here's, I think we have a couple solutions to that, and it's not necessarily relative to the commission, but one thing that obviously protected John a lot in this was the frequency of testing.

[886] You know, if you look at his numbers and these were, these were instances where they collected samples, but in many of these cases, they did multiple tests on him, and that means, you know, the tests I'm reading were for the anabolic steroid panel, but in addition to that, they may have done a biological passport test on that same collection.

[887] They may have done an HGH test, an EPO test.

[888] And this is all confidential that you saw that doesn't release all this They release numbers on the publicly available website, but you don't see what those tests are done.

[889] So the reality, and they just told me this, is John was one of the most, if not the most tested athlete over these last six months.

[890] When you look at total amount of tests on his samples, excuse me, one thing that obviously protected them here was that volume of testing.

[891] And so you Sada came to us and said, you know, hey, we think that you probably should, you know, up the amount of tests that you're doing.

[892] So we just renewed a contract with USADA and we're increasing our testing numbers by 30 to 40%.

[893] We currently, the first three years of the program, we're under contract for approximately 2 ,700 tests.

[894] And starting this next year, we're going to up that to around 43, 4 ,400 tests.

[895] So I think it's going to be more of a burden.

[896] They're going to be, you know, Osada's showing up in more doorsteps early in the morning of more of our athletes.

[897] but I think this is a perfect example that that increased volume of testing actually can be a protectant to the athlete, especially when you're talking these low -level picogram quantities and contaminated cases and things like that.

[898] We just got to get athletes to stop taking any supplement that's not third -party tested.

[899] Great point.

[900] So here's what we've done in that area.

[901] So about three months ago, Usada hosted a working group.

[902] It included the UFC, myself and our sports nutritionist Clint Wattenberg, who you've met were there.

[903] Major League Baseball was there.

[904] The Department of Defense was there.

[905] There's been war fighters who have purchased supplements at bases over in Iraq and Afghanistan that contain ephedrin and other bad products.

[906] Some of them potentially have died as a result of ingesting them.

[907] So they definitely have an interest in safety and dietary supplements.

[908] And Usada's experts were there.

[909] What we did is we invited in the major third -party certification companies.

[910] And each one took a half day presenting what?

[911] their programs look like.

[912] We went back and huddled after each one and huddled at the conclusion and said, what is a platinum standard third -party certification look like?

[913] All these presentations we got, what was strengths on ones, weaknesses, and the others, and we have to put a perfect one together.

[914] What does it look like?

[915] Over the last month, we've been authoring a paper that's going to be published in a scientific journal going over what that gold standard, platinum standard looks like.

[916] Going forward, any third -party certification company that can meet that, and there's some that are very close, I think you'll be able to do it very quickly, we are going to say, USADA is going to say, this is an approve line of supplements.

[917] We approve you to take this.

[918] And this is something that we've been unable to do in the first three and a half years of the program.

[919] And I tell you, Joe, it's the most common question I get from our athletes.

[920] What's USADA approved?

[921] And as soon as I say, USADA doesn't approve.

[922] any supplements.

[923] But here's how you ensure your safety.

[924] They stop listening.

[925] It goes in one ear out the other.

[926] This is a, I mean, it's a silly suggestion, but why doesn't the UFC come up with its own supplement line and provide them to the fighters and say you can't take anything else?

[927] Yeah.

[928] I mean, it's definitely been talked through.

[929] If they had sponsorships with other supplement lines.

[930] Exactly.

[931] There's a lot of dynamics to it.

[932] It's not as easy as, yeah, doing it overnight and the distribution method.

[933] Just if you could say, hey, you could take creatine, you could take, you know, all the multivitamins, you could take, you know, branch chain amino acids, all these things that have been proven to be effective.

[934] But that's weird too, right?

[935] It's like they're effective, meaning they enhance performance and recovery.

[936] But they don't do enough to be considered a performance enhancing drug.

[937] Yeah, and they're present in the food supply, too.

[938] So, like, you know, basically out of convenient, you can go eat 10 chicken breasts or, you know, have a couple scoops of protein.

[939] And if you're on the go and don't have time to do it.

[940] So I think, again, apples and oranges in terms of performance enhancing or not.

[941] So the theory would be we have an approved when I'm or Donna asked that question, what's approved?

[942] I can say here's, let's say NSF.

[943] NSF has 1 ,200 supplements that are approved.

[944] I'd say all 1 ,200 of these are approved.

[945] You should only use these.

[946] If something were to happen to an athlete that used an approved line of supplements to get out of jail free card.

[947] If they can prove it and you saw it independently prove it, there's no sanction.

[948] I think that is going to go a long way, and I'll give you a reason for that.

[949] Major League Baseball does that.

[950] They have for the last couple years, now they have some advantage in that all their athletes are employees and are coming into the same facility during the season.

[951] So they have some control over there is what we don't.

[952] Our athletes are spread amongst, I think, 46 countries throughout the world, so it's more of a challenge.

[953] But baseball said the only supplements we're allowing.

[954] in the clubhouse or in a facility are, and they use NSF supplements, they had zero contaminated supplement cases last year.

[955] They had, I think their testing numbers were four times the amount of our testing numbers and zero contaminated supplements.

[956] I mean, the proof's in the pudding right there.

[957] So they have some sort of a deal with NSF?

[958] I don't know if it's a deal other than they've examined who those certification companies are and they feel that they're, you know, at the top of the line.

[959] We don't want to exclude any.

[960] That's why we're contributing to this paper to say, look, anyone could be one of these approved lines, but you must meet this criteria for a platinum standard program.

[961] But it's coming from someone who's in the supplement business, me, that's the Wild West out there.

[962] Boy, is it?

[963] I mean, there's a lot of shit out there that's just, they purposely add performance -enhancing drugs to their stuff because it's cheap and people take it and they experience these gains and then they sell a lot of it.

[964] Yeah, and then you get a following.

[965] Exactly.

[966] I saw that when I was with the FDA.

[967] There is, and what they normally will do for maybe the first six months of the product, they'll spike it with something if they're going that route, and then to decrease liability thereafter, they've already got the following.

[968] They back off.

[969] The stuff's working like hell, and then they back off just in case the government start to sniff around.

[970] And it doesn't work anymore.

[971] People go, oh, my body must have adapted.

[972] Exactly.

[973] No, you're off the juice, son.

[974] Yep.

[975] This, it's really such a shame because this is such a fantastic fight.

[976] I mean, there's so much drama involved already, just having John Jones returning, having Alexander Gustafson looking absolutely sensational in his last fight with Glover Tashara, all the trash talk and hype and intensity in the fact that this is really, other than D .C. versus John, this is the fight that people want to see in the light heavyweight division.

[977] And look, nobody's saying, and I'm certainly not saying that John didn't do anything wrong.

[978] He obviously did.

[979] John has two times now tested positive for prohibited substances.

[980] However, in both occasions, arbitrators have determined that it was not done intentionally.

[981] So anyone who says that John's getting off light on this, he's been suspended for almost two and a half years with a lack of evidence of any intentional use.

[982] are cheating.

[983] You know how much money he's probably lost in those two and a half years?

[984] I mean, tens of millions of dollars, his reputation.

[985] Anybody who says that he got off, you know, Scott Free on this, I would argue the otherwise.

[986] He was stalled to the strictness of liability standards out there, someone at the top of their game, money earning potential like him.

[987] There's also an incredible amount of stress and pressure that's on him.

[988] He's a human being.

[989] He feels and he hears what people are, you know, saying about them.

[990] And that's got to be very difficult.

[991] So coming off of this massive suspension.

[992] So he's coming off of this suspension, which was huge, very public, very worldwide, after the cocaine, the car accident, the previous, the dick pills that had the stuff.

[993] And I mean, there's so many things.

[994] And then to have this happen literally the week of and have the fight moved to California.

[995] I mean.

[996] And I get the skepticism that's out there.

[997] Again, without delving into this, I've spent hours and hours.

[998] And these experts have spent their careers looking into.

[999] to that.

[1000] That's really what's required to get a comprehension and understanding of it.

[1001] Another thing, another argument, John's being treated especially because he's John.

[1002] But we had another athlete that this somewhat identical thing happened to, but nowhere near at the level of John.

[1003] So a kid by a name of Grant Dawson.

[1004] So Grant Dawson last summer was in the Dayton White Contender Series, had an awesome fight.

[1005] Dana's like, you got a contract kid.

[1006] we get them into the USADA program.

[1007] The USADA program requires you to disclose everything you've used going back 12 months or one year.

[1008] The idea being, look, even though you weren't under the program, if you used, you know, Oral Tarina Ball eight or nine months ago, there could still be an advantage that you be getting, you know, we're not going to necessarily suspend you because you weren't subject to the program then.

[1009] But we're not going to let you fight right away.

[1010] You can have to be in the program for a certain amount of time, testing clean.

[1011] so he didn't he didn't disclose that he was using anything his first test he tests positive for m3 metabolite low levels he goes to arbitration argues testifies under oath i've never heard of this substance i've never taken it i would never cheat here are all the supplements i was using i can't find it the arbitrator hears the hearing usada goes to them says hold on a second we're looking into this matter talking to baseball whatever usada comes out that hey we can't prove that this didn't enter his substance a year before that disclosure required him to disclose what he was using.

[1012] So he was basically let off and eligible.

[1013] So John's not the only person in the UFC that this has happened to, notwithstanding other professional sports leagues, other Olympics.

[1014] It's happened to other athletes.

[1015] He's not the only one.

[1016] So I think what's important for people, I get the skepticism, but I think it's It's very important that people don't accuse someone of something that they didn't do.

[1017] And I want you, if you're listening to this, I want you to imagine if you're John Jones and you're trying to get your shit together and you didn't do anything new.

[1018] You didn't do anything different.

[1019] We've got to have a path of redemption for people.

[1020] You have to.

[1021] And if John, as you're saying and all these tests conclude, if he didn't do anything, folks, you've got to stop saying.

[1022] he's cheating.

[1023] You got, he's not cheating.

[1024] If he's not cheating and if it's showing that these are these long -term residual metabolites that are in incredibly small dosage, it's, there's real cheaters out there.

[1025] And John's fucked up.

[1026] He has fucked up.

[1027] And you were all right to be upset at him when he fucked up.

[1028] This is not, at least is my conclusion after talking to you.

[1029] And, and I've, I've talked to some independent scientists that were skeptical about some of the aspects of it.

[1030] But they're also, they're skeptical because they're not up to date, perhaps, on the differences in this pulsing effect or the fact that this is something that is relatively, there's not a lot of documentation on this.

[1031] I mean, this is something that's relatively new in terms of our ability to understand picograms, our ability to understand this pulsing effect, all these different, these variables that you have to take into account when it comes to this.

[1032] people love to call it cheat they love to and it's good it's good that the people are out there keeping people honest but i think you got to we got to look at this the right way and i think the right way is what you're the way you're laying it out here i don't see any holes in this so you know a couple things in the future that people can look forward to look we want and john wants to fight nevada again and nevada has basically said look i think we understand this issue but we need to have this hearing there will be a public hearing on this my understanding is early quarter one so look you know don't take my word for it wait until January I'm sure they'll call some of these experts to testify introduce some of these documents into the public record longer even than this conversation yes my that would be my guess yeah so yeah I mean that's that's to come the whole thing is such a disaster for everybody else on the card for Amanda Nunes and Chris Cyborg and for all the people in the undercard I mean it's just to have them to move all the way to California When I'm happy about those, the fight is still happening.

[1033] I'm very happy the fight is still happening.

[1034] I am, and again, I have to take an objective look about, is this fair, as it relates to how our policy and what the rules are.

[1035] And, you know, when you have, you know, one of the experts in the world, Dr. Daniel Eichner of the Smurdle Laboratory, issue an absolute statement.

[1036] Like, there is no evidence that DHCMT has been readministered and that based on these, low levels, he does not retaining a performance enhancing benefit.

[1037] How out of fairness and implementing the program do you prevent this fight from happening?

[1038] You can't do that.

[1039] It would be categorically unfair.

[1040] Moving forward from here, what changes and what do we do to stop something like this from happening again?

[1041] Well, again, I think the increased volume of testing is going to help.

[1042] I think being able to specifically direct our athletes to approve line of supplements will help but you know hey we can don and i can message the hell out of these things but you know it it takes the athletes in their camps to listen to what we're saying so i mean if anything good comes out of this hopefully it's it's a warning to those other others out there about how careful you need to be so to just to wrap this up so people understand if you if you want to put a button on this there's no evidence whatsoever of any microdosing so this is one of the concerns People were worried about microdosing.

[1043] No evidence whatsoever of microdosing.

[1044] It wouldn't be a substance.

[1045] You would generally microdose.

[1046] You do endogenous substances, not exogenous.

[1047] There's also no evidence of the short term and medium term.

[1048] Medium, is it medium term?

[1049] Yep.

[1050] Metabolites that were recognized by Rachankov.

[1051] Is that I say his name again?

[1052] I think it is.

[1053] Yep.

[1054] Why do I think, Grigory.

[1055] I have a tough time with it too.

[1056] Because it's Grigory.

[1057] It's not even Gregory.

[1058] It's Grigory.

[1059] That's the only test we have.

[1060] No parent compound ever found as well.

[1061] These are the only tests we have that show these long -term, short -term and medium -term metabolites.

[1062] These, the short -term and the medium -term ones that would be indicative of him taking it recently don't exist in any point in time during these testing.

[1063] Correct.

[1064] So this is most likely something that is inside of his body that is in incredibly small levels.

[1065] And is it safe to say that the detection levels, that the detection levels, that the detection, methods are far superior today than they were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago.

[1066] Increased by thousands of percentage points in sensitivity.

[1067] I mean, again.

[1068] And how recently?

[1069] Over the last five years?

[1070] And how recently have they, if they improved from today versus a year ago?

[1071] Yeah, I believe so.

[1072] Again, you know, when I heard about the one picogram detection of the M3 metabolite, you know, that was something that happened this year.

[1073] I'm not aware of that ever being that low of a number in any time in the past.

[1074] So I think, you know, literally week by week, month by month, as we're going here, that level of sensitivity is increasing exponentially.

[1075] And also, no possible performance enhancing benefits from these incredibly low levels?

[1076] That's what the experts are telling me. Look, and again, I'm not the expert.

[1077] I don't want to profess that I am, but what do I have to go to?

[1078] I need to go to those experts that have made careers out of studying these substances and the benefits, and they are all universally telling me that there's no performance -nancing benefit.

[1079] Full compliance by John Jones in terms of being there for USADA at every single test, notifying his whereabouts, doing everything by the book in terms of what the UFC requires and what USADA requires.

[1080] Yeah, so our program has a three -strike policy.

[1081] So basically, you know, if you miss a test for an unexplained reason, three times, then it could be a violation.

[1082] John's never had one whereabouts strike.

[1083] He's always been available when USADA's tried to test them.

[1084] And again, especially recently, one of the most tested athletes in the UFC.

[1085] Wasn't there one test in the past where USADA showed up at the gym and there was some sort of speculation that John was hiding under the ring?

[1086] Pre -Usada.

[1087] That was pre -Usada before I got here.

[1088] I've heard about that.

[1089] I don't know details.

[1090] I don't know whether it's true or not.

[1091] I think it was a Nevada State Athletic Commission test.

[1092] My recollection is right, but it wasn't a USADA test.

[1093] Okay.

[1094] So there's no reason in terms of how you're looking at this particular case that this fight should not take place or that John should be sanctioned any further.

[1095] There isn't.

[1096] And look, it's the least compelling argument, but I think, you know, you have to look at it.

[1097] You have to look at the common sense approach to this.

[1098] A guy who went through a year and a half almost suspension, two very, I would categorize as embarrassing public hearings in California.

[1099] A long arbitration hearing before McLaren.

[1100] All this science is rooted out about how long this stuff stays in your system, long -term metabolites for months, maybe years.

[1101] You're going to choose to use oral turinabol still after going through all that leading up to a fight?

[1102] I don't buy that.

[1103] See, I don't think, I think I agree with what you're saying.

[1104] But in terms of people fucking up, there are no bounds on human stupidity.

[1105] and in terms of people's ability to do impulsive things that are irrational that wind up sabotaging their career, there's almost more of an indication that people are willing to do that than not.

[1106] It's very, it's, you're less likely, and this is in terms of, especially in particular, in fighters, fighters are ridiculously impulsive.

[1107] It's one of the things that categorizes, and it's a characteristic of the type of human being that gets involved in that line of work in the first place.

[1108] They're wild motherfuckers.

[1109] They're crazy.

[1110] They do crazy shit And I just I don't buy that That would be new level crazy And look again I categorize John is a new level crazy guy Lease compelling argument I agree A least compelling but I think we'd be remiss If we didn't at least consider that I okay I see your point I don't buy it That part I don't buy I buy all the science And I'm a big John Jones fan I mean you can call me A John Jones suck up all day long I think he's one of the greatest fall time And I think it's not over for him I think he still could reach I don't even think he's at his peak I think he's still got time to be the greatest of all time if he hasn't already achieved that but I think that he's also he's a wild man you know it's one of the reasons why he's so great it's one of the reasons why he opened up the fight with Shogun at 22 years old with a flying knee and he's a wild motherfucker that's who he is and it's one of many reasons besides his talent that he's so goddamn good I know the lows of the lows he's gone through these last two years.

[1111] You wouldn't believe how low those lows were.

[1112] And so again, look, I don't disagree with you that that's not out of the area of consideration.

[1113] But, man, I just don't think anybody could be that reckless.

[1114] I hope you're right.

[1115] I also worry that fighters, often in times, and I'm not accusing John of doing this, but oftentimes surround themselves with morons.

[1116] And these morons give them poor advice.

[1117] And these morons think that they have ways to skirt systems and get around the rules and they have people that you know throw a much fancy words their way and they want to believe and this happens all the time this happens all the time with fighters in regards to financial management and and advice that they get with that I mean I've seen like world -class fighters do ridiculous shit in terms of strength and conditioning because some asshole with a good vocabulary talks them into some nonsense this is just one of the things that happens with fighters and oftentimes they can be around someone who gives them poor advice in terms of what they can and cannot get away with when it comes to supplementation and when it comes to steroid use.

[1118] Yeah, absolutely.

[1119] And I see that all over the place.

[1120] In John's case, however, to give credit where credits do, you know, his team, after the initial positive with the dick pills, was very interactive with me and Donna and, you know, checking supplements, hey, what line should we go to show they, you know, to give them credit.

[1121] They definitely showed an increased exercise of care when it came.

[1122] to supplementation with John.

[1123] Well, that's great to hear, and I really hope this is the thing of the past, and I hope this is the last time we ever have to talk about John in this term, and that moving forward, we just talk about him in terms of his performances and his fights and, you know, what he's already achieved.

[1124] He's already the youngest UFC champion of all time.

[1125] Anything else?

[1126] Yeah, so I was going to bring this up at the beginning, but the golden snitch.

[1127] That's, first of all, that's Brendan Schaub's name.

[1128] He gave it to you.

[1129] So taken on a life of its own And I think I think you know The last time we talked about Donna asking Alexa Who Jeff admits the golden snitch Yes let's see that So let's see what Siri says Hold on a second Let's see what Siri says I've never tried this Hold on a second Who is the golden snitch Here's some information What Oh Yeah Quidditch It's something in Harry Potter Yeah I didn't know you After the last time on And I mentioned And, you know, it was in, I think, my Wikipedia profile it had me as, aka the golden snitch.

[1130] Somebody took that down.

[1131] Hey, Siri, who is the golden snitch?

[1132] Oh, Siri.

[1133] Siri keeps going with quad -itch.

[1134] So someone took it down from Wikipedia?

[1135] Why would they do that?

[1136] Well, I think we talked about it.

[1137] You're like, hey, I don't know.

[1138] They just did it.

[1139] How dare you.

[1140] So, I think I told you last time.

[1141] I bet it's back up already.

[1142] Co -workers call me it.

[1143] My family calls me it.

[1144] They call you.

[1145] the golden switch.

[1146] Friends call me it.

[1147] I was at the MMA awards last year and some Yahoo had a few pops back at me as screaming in between presentations.

[1148] The golden snitch is in that.

[1149] I'm slinking down in my chair.

[1150] My girlfriend and I. There it is.

[1151] Bam, the golden stitch is back up already.

[1152] I had that UFC on the end that I popped up.

[1153] Beautiful.

[1154] Just fucking, when they do that, just put your hands up in the air.

[1155] Make a shirt.

[1156] Like you won.

[1157] So you know, you definitely should make a shirt.

[1158] During shows, I'll sit pretty close to the cage, go out in between a fight into the bathroom.

[1159] And it's not Joe Rogan level, half the damn arena standing up excited to see you walking in and out of the fighter walk.

[1160] But two or three people in that walk, when I go backstage to check on, he saw the golden snitch.

[1161] And so give them reckon, you know.

[1162] Steve Reed, you know, Steve Reed, our bald security, that badass looking guy on stage.

[1163] He'll come back to stage.

[1164] He goes, mate, they're calling me the snitch out there, man. I think I'm you.

[1165] That poor guy pays for it.

[1166] Steve's a scary guy.

[1167] He's a great dude.

[1168] He's a great guy is at the top of his game in security.

[1169] Oh, I trust that.

[1170] His background is unbelievable.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] I saw him one time in Las Vegas during a fight.

[1173] He was sitting on the floor.

[1174] Something's happening in the fight.

[1175] The crowd goes fucking bananas.

[1176] And everybody stands up on the floor.

[1177] Steve stands up and just motions sit down in the entire fucking section sat down.

[1178] 200 plus people.

[1179] I'm like, dude.

[1180] If you can, without even having a. touch somebody, just stand up by your presence alone and control something like that.

[1181] I mean, the best I've ever seen.

[1182] He's as legit as it gets.

[1183] Do you, are you going to do anything to market this?

[1184] Well, that's getting to my story here.

[1185] It's not marketing, but let me finish the story here.

[1186] So I'm in Chicago this year.

[1187] I think that was a pay -per -view.

[1188] You were there, right?

[1189] Yes.

[1190] So something happened, and I was late getting to the arena, and they had cut off kind of the loading dock.

[1191] I couldn't get to it.

[1192] So I had my oldest daughter with me. And so we're having to walk through, where all the crowds walking in and you know dudes all over golden snitch hey I get a picture of golden snitch my daughter's like what the fuck's like what is going on how was your daughter so she's 22 so two days ago Christmas morning I'm opening up presents so I get the presents from my daughters the three of them and my middle daughter is very artistic and so they create these cool sculpted beer mugs and there's four of them one of them's like bald guy brewing Novitsky something and one of them says golden snitch brewing company so it's a cool looking thing and she drew me a black and white kind of rendition of all four which I'm going to hang up really cool so then my girlfriend's there so she hands me the box and she's been telling me all along she goes I got you the best fucking present ever in the history of presence I'm like the hell is this so I open up the box oh my goodness she's got this series of t -shirts and I think what size are you Large.

[1193] There we go, man. So you, since you created it, you literally and figuratively have to wear it now.

[1194] Dude.

[1195] This is outrageous.

[1196] So that picture, there's some.

[1197] There we go, baby.

[1198] Ladies and gentlemen, the circle is closed.

[1199] Look at that.

[1200] Come on.

[1201] So I posted.

[1202] You look like a boot on this or something, man. That's pretty bad.

[1203] It's like Kwitang King from the Kung Fu series.

[1204] Moscow.

[1205] And I think I can say this.

[1206] Hopefully they'll let me back in.

[1207] But it's out in front of KGB or FSB headquarters.

[1208] So that building in the background is KGBF now known as FSB.

[1209] Oh, wow.

[1210] So, yeah, so I posted a picture.

[1211] She got me like 20 shirts.

[1212] I put them on private Instagram, Facebook.

[1213] Everybody in the world's like, take my money, man. Where can I get one?

[1214] Guess what I'm wearing at the way in's tomorrow.

[1215] All right.

[1216] you guys created it you got to own it now i got one for shop too you can throw along shop's mad at you is he yeah he's called you the golden rat now he's changed the name i thought maybe he's he's misinformed he thinks first of all that you were an employee of usada oh there you go and that now you're an employee of the ufc uh he's misinformed about that and i think he he likes to call skeptical he's skeptical hippo i am skeptical as well but i One thing that I've learned from doing this podcast over the years is that there's no fucking way.

[1217] It's impossible to know everything.

[1218] It is impossible.

[1219] And you have to rely on the expertise of the people who have spent a lifetime studying these things.

[1220] It's very important.

[1221] Here's another thing.

[1222] There's no way these people could be lying about this and it wouldn't massively damage their career going forward.

[1223] They'd be done.

[1224] Someone would find out.

[1225] Someone would get to them.

[1226] The other scientists would out them.

[1227] There would be studies done.

[1228] There would be papers done.

[1229] The internet would find out about it.

[1230] Everybody would know.

[1231] There's no way.

[1232] It's pretty unprecedented in writing with the lack of these studies.

[1233] The Rochenko one being the...

[1234] Am I saying it even right?

[1235] How do you say it?

[1236] Rachenko.

[1237] It's pretty unprecedented that they would put these absolutes in writing.

[1238] You know, with this lot...

[1239] I think they looked at it very hard and detailed, and obviously they weren't quick in turning it around.

[1240] And we would have loved this decision to be made a lot earlier so we could have rooted it and vetted it out with Nevada.

[1241] But they did indeed, you know, sign their names to these pretty absolute statements.

[1242] And what else can the UFC and I do when these experts are putting those absolutes out there?

[1243] And I get the people go, oh, what else can the UFC do?

[1244] You got to understand, folks.

[1245] This would be career suicide.

[1246] This is, this is cutting edge science.

[1247] talking about, there's too many people that would have a vested interest in calling bullshit.

[1248] It's not something, they don't fuck around when it comes to these things.

[1249] The people that are at the front of the line when it comes to catching people on these things and the science that they're imploring, they're involved with, this is not, you can't like guess on the outside with no education.

[1250] It's just not wise.

[1251] And this is what I keep seeing over and over again.

[1252] It's people that have some knowledge a little bit of knowledge and they're pretending that they have a Ph .D. in this shit.

[1253] Go, I mean, for those that want to, you know, do more detective work, go read McLaren's written decision on John's July 2018, July, 2018 test.

[1254] Go read the Wachankoff study on the DHCMT and the metabolites and go read the recent clomaphene study where it shows this chlorinated substance.

[1255] It's pulsing.

[1256] It goes away.

[1257] comes back higher than before goes away comes back lower goes away comes back higher crazy stuff okay um are we good when can someone get one of these she only made about 15 of them for me get the fuck out of here man you got to sell these you have to sell these maybe do something maybe do something for charity or something young jamie dot com yeah someone needs to sell these we could talk but then it's not exclusive you want to have the exclusive shirt where nobody else can get i don't want anything exclusive i'm not into that man all right Jeff, thank you very much.

[1258] Thank you for coming on here and clarifying.

[1259] Please, folks, please have an open mind.

[1260] Please.

[1261] I know you want to call bullshit.

[1262] There's times.

[1263] There's times to call bullshit, but there's times to recognize that this is a complicated issue and that we've laid it out as I'm pretty convinced.

[1264] Appreciate it, Joe.

[1265] And I'm dumb.

[1266] So you might be smarter than me. All right, bye, everybody.