Only in sports would getting 100% on a test imply that you ‘failed’ it. If that same rule applied to the majority of my high school career, then I ‘passed’ just enough classes to graduate. Of course, pass in this scenario means fail — but I’m sure most of already discovered that. You passed this test of identifying horrible jokes. Or maybe, you ‘failed.’
Personally, I think all fighters should be able to utilize all performance enhancing substances to increase the longevity of their career. It would eliminate drug-testing and increase the probability that each fighter would possess a cartoon-like physique before entering the cage. Freakishly large muscles equates to higher viewership for MMA, which would also result in fighters getting one step closer to those boxing paydays that guys like Floyd Mayweather (the greatest boxer of our generation) are accustomed to. However it’s not what I think, but what they think. ‘They’ in some grand and convoluted way believe that marijuana is a performance enhancing drug. Yeah, the hilarity of that previous statement is resounding. I think people that believe the earth is flat have a stronger argument.
They, in this scenario, is Keith Kizer the executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. In this interview with BoxingScene, Kizer claims Nick Diaz consumed 24 bottles of water prior to his UFC 143 drug test in an attempt to lower the level of marijuana in his system.
It was here, twice for the same drug, marijuana. But Nick did some things that came out in the hearing. Before the hearing, he came out and said ‘yeah, well I smoked seven days before.’ Wait a minute, are you saying that you lied on our pre-fight questionnaire? We asked him if he took anything in the last fifteen days. He basically admitted that he did, so we added basically the equivalent of perjury and that was part of the findings against him. So it wasn’t only for testing positive for the marijuana, it was also for lying about it on the form.
The second thing with Nick is that after the fight he drank like two dozen bottles of water, which we later found out from both from his expert, as well as our own, the effect of that could very well have been the intent to lower the level of marijuana in his system to try to get it below the cutoff. It didn’t quite work. He was still above the cutoff but the level wasn’t very high.
If the NSAC drug tested all MMA journalists in the industry, everyone would be suspended and fined.
