Pride FC contracts used to specifically state they would not test for steroids. Why put that in the contract if you didn’t want the fighters to actually take steroids?
Japanese MMA has always been more about attraction and spectacle than natural athleticism. If steroids help draw more fans to the arena, then steroids are what their athletes should take!
Sporting purists won’t like this, but by communicating to their fighters that steroid-testing would not take place, it created an even playing field. Pride was saying that steroids are fair game, so it wasn’t really cheating.
As a result of this policy however, many fighters ended up looking quite a bit smaller when they returned to fighting in places where drug testing at least existed in some form. This article takes a look at 5 of these such fighters.
5. Josh Barnett
Josh Barnett has possibly failed more drug tests than any other fighter in history. Just a brief Barnett-history: He flunked a drug test at UFC 34. Then he flunked another test at UFC 36 after winning the heavyweight title. This is all before USADA as well, so he’s probably not even trying to get away with it.
After his 2nd failed test he went to Japan, where the photo on the left shows he was looking pretty jacked when he competed for Pancrase. When he returned to the USA to fight for Affliction, he again flunked a drug test.
This time it caused his fight with Fedor to be cancelled, and caused Affliction to go out of business. When he finally got back to the UFC his torso started to look as though it were melting.
Barnett’s latest stint in the UFC has seen him go 3-2. In December USADA notified the UFC that Barnett failed an out-of-competition test. He’s been looking into a pro-wrestling career as of late.
