Dana White On Drug Testing: Pot Shouldn’t Disqualify UFC Fighters


Dana White’s drug testing fears for the UFC may not be what you’d expect — and the straightforward president of the organization says that he suspects implementing such measures would have drastic consequences for the league.

Dana White talked drug testing and the UFC Thursday, admitting that he feels as many as four out of five fighters would be automatically disqualified from fighting if they were subject to that sort of regulation.

But it isn’t performance enhancing drugs that White thinks are the problem. Yahoo!Sports quotes the UFC chief as saying that the league’s fighters are likely engaging in the use of a banned substance but that it wouldn’t affect their performance positively.

White said:

“Forget about PEDs … If we get into this system that we’re talking about where we would randomly test these guys, do you know how many guys would probably test positive for marijuana? It would be probably off the charts … “

And while puffing the magic dragon never made anyone a better fighter, Dana White says drug testing would affect the roster nonetheless:

“If you randomly test them and then [the results] came out, you’d get the exact same suspension [for using marijuana] as you do for using PEDs.”

White expounded upon his drug testing concerns for the UFC in a profanity-peppered rant, adding that marijuana use doesn’t affect opponents the way performance enhancing drugs do:

“I don’t even smoke marijuana, but it’s [expletive] illegal and you shouldn’t do it … OK? But the guys are going to get busted [for testing positive for marijuana] and they’re going to get the same suspension they would for a PED. When you take a performance-enhancing drug and you go in and you face another fighter, you can hurt him. You know what I mean?”

He continues:

“But [giving fighters similar suspensions for using both PEDs and marijuana] is just crazy. It’s so easy to sit there and say, ‘Here’s what you should do. Here’s how you fix it,’ but there are so many flaws in the system, it’s just not that easy. It’s not just, ‘Hey, let’s sign up this company [to do testing].’ There’s a whole [expletive] of things that would come about.”

Dana White surmises that drug testing could knock out as many as 400 fighters of 475.

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