I cannot believe the amount of fans on here that are in favor of USADA leaving the sport. I think it is an atrocious decision for the sport.
All sport played on a professional level (and I'd argue some sports on a non-professional level) should have compulsory drug testing from a legitimate agency. The very nature of sport is that it is played on a level playing field and is as safe as possible for the athletes. I feel tremendously sorry for the clean athletes in the UFC today. This decision has pretty much forced them to join the arms race to get as juiced as possible in order to compete. What a fucking horrible day for them today. The UFC have said to them.....fuck your health and get jacked up for your job.
Some athletes at any sport will always try to beat the system. But, you still need that drug testing there to at least offer some sort of deterrent. I absolutely believe the deterrent is there as the sport is 100% cleaner that what it was in its early days. To throw the testing away and have a free for all is a fucking disgraceful decision.
1) 99.9 percent of all high level athletes are using PEDs. and the ones that aren't are fucking naturals just "built different"; rare but not non-existent
2) the entire history of humanity - no, existence- is an arms race. as long as men compete against one another for resources, mating rights, and just to survive for that matter, we will always be part of an everlasting arms race
3) to the bolded: again, nobody is forcing anybody to use PEDs "in order to compete". nobody is forcing anybody to compete in mma anyways. there are many other ways to make a living in todays societies that do not involved hand to hand combat.
but, the bottom line is that more enhanced athletes equates to more enhanced profits. every other major sport realizes this and it is why every other major sports athletes are using a ton of PEDs - even if there is "testing". i will compare two fights for example:
Vitor Belfort vs Luke Rockhold
and
Fabricio Werdum vs Aleksei Oleinik
i watched both of these fights with some friends when they happened. the first fight - Belfort vs Rockhold- literally got some of these guys into following mma with a passion, it was mind blowing to them. compare that to Werdum vs Oleinik who looked like a couple of skinny fat middle aged men who could barely move and frankly made the entire sport look like a bush league
if the UFC wants to compete with every other major sport, its athletes have to be enhanced to the same degree as all the other major sports. that is what the viewer base; the fans; the money flowing into the sport...wants