After Jon Jones’ issue, here’s an advice for fighters on taking supplements

Fighters who seek to legally enhance their performance in the cage would be wise to create the equivalent of a paper trial, according to a bodybuilding expert and MMA radio host.
“So if you get popped, and you’re clean and you think it came from a supplement, you can literally hand USADA both bottles,” Pro MMA Radio’s Larry Pepe recently told MMAjunkie Radio.
In the wake of two high-profile drug positives – UFC interim light heavyweight champ Jon Jones and former heavyweight champBrock Lesnar – Pepe, a longtime observer of the supplement industry, has plenty of advice for fighters.
First, he said, you double up on your supplements. That means buying two of everything on a trip to the local store. It also means you make sure the bottles come from the same batch so they can both be tested in the event of a positive.
The other way to avoid trouble, Pepe said, is to not buy supplements from fly-by-night companies that are less incentivized to create high-quality products free of performance-enhancers.
“You don’t use brands you’ve never heard of, because the dude at the gym … comes up to you and says, ‘This stuff rocks,’” he said. “Those fringe companies have a lot less to lose if they purposely taint their supplements.
“There are companies that have no ethics that put stuff in their products knowing they were banned or illegal, and they didn’t put it on the label because they didn’t want you to know you were taking something illegal and they wanted it to keep working so you’ll keep buying.”
These measures might not be a cost effective way to do things, Pepe added. But they’re a lot cheaper than the financial loss of sitting out two years, which is typically what first-time doping offenders face under the UFC’s anti-doping program.
Jones (22-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC), he said, faces an uphill road to convincing USADA that a supplement was tainted with two banned substances – clomiphene and letrozole – on two occasions, or the “A” and “B” samples that came back with the same results following an out-of-competition test in connection with his title unifier against Daniel Cormier (17-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) at UFC 200.
If Jones can prove the supplements were tainted, Pepe ventured, he should sue the offending companies for damages. But if history is any indication, claiming that clomiphene was illicitly put in the champ’s product would be a first.
“I could not find one single supplement ever that was tainted with clomiphene,” Pepe said. “Whoever manufactured that supplement would have either had to have intentionally put that estrogen blocker in there, or somehow manufactured at a facility that had clomiphene – it would be a stretch. When you’re able to get out on a tainted supplement defense, that’s like hitting the lottery. On two different substances on a tainted supplement defense, that’s an uphill climb.”
Pepe said the odds might be improved with the Jones camp hiring Howard Jacobs, a prominent anti-doping attorney who has represented dozens of high-profile athletes and MMA fighters. But he also claims the fighter’s camp made a significant mistake when it did not send a representative to the lab where Jones’ “B” sample was tested at the WADA-accredited Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Salt Lake City.
Not doing so may have cost Jones a significant opportunity to prove his innocence by raising questions about the testing methodology and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results, Pepe said.
“Somebody has got to be on that plane, because what Howard Jacobs knows that (Jones’ manager) Malki (Kawa) apparently doesn’t is that it’s not about that the ‘B’ sample is going to come back the same – it virtually always does,” Pepe said. “It’s about that somebody is present to see how that sample is tested, how it is handled. If no one is there, for all you know, somebody drops five vials on the floor and picks them up and stores them in the wrong box. What’s the chain of custody? You challenge these cases more often on procedure than substance.”
The way Pepe sees it, an extra plane ticket, like an extra bottle of a supplement, is a small price to pay when you measure the potential loss involved in a positive drug test.
“When you look at the impact on your career and your finances, let’s stick with Jones,” Pepe said. “Two years, five fights, $20, $25 million between pay-per-view and sponsors, all that time out in the prime of your career? Boy, that’s a big roll of the dice that you’re hoping, if you’re truly clean, that what’s on the label is all that’s on the label.”

Category: Mixed Martial Arts