Allow me to paint a picture:

You’re an up-and-coming MMA fighter. Your dream is to become a UFC champion and your ultimate goal is to become one of the greatest fighters to ever live (naturally, making millions of dollars is a part of this dream as well).

You’re obsessed with winning, so much that the idea consumes all of your life. You have to make it by any means.

By any means.

You’ve heard the stories around the gym. Stick a needle into your body a few times a day to recover faster, improve your endurance, and burn that extra fat right off. When the weigh-in comes around, you’ll be able to make weight and put on 25 pounds by the time of the fight.

You look at the biggest names in the sport and talk to the people within the industry. You make connections, ask questions and find out exactly what’s going. Most importantly, you find out that practically everyone uses something.

And you won’t get caught. “It’s not a drug test, it’s an IQ test,” they say.

Will you do it? Will you take the PEDs?

Of course. You’re the kind of person who has to win. And since everyone else is doing it, you convince yourself that you’re just an innocent victim having to play by the unspoken rules of the game.

5 Years Later

Fast-forward five years. You’ve reached the top, make millions of dollars a year and reign as the champion of your weight class.

Meanwhile, the sport has grown tremendously, and the potential to make money is higher than it’s ever been. Top athletes from different types of martial arts are coming into the sport and they’re able to access educated coaching teams and – just as importantly – “nutritionists.”

You have a pile of challengers hungry to take what’s yours – and here’s the key part: every one of them has less to lose than you do. Unlike you, they’re willing to take huge risks (“at least we gave it a real shot”).

You’re still beating your challengers, but you’re absorbing a lot of damage in the process. They’re now just as big as you (perhaps even bigger) with plenty of endurance and power.

Oh, and you know they’re using performance-enhancing drugs, because who isn’t? Hell, just to make sure, you’ve even hired a private investigator to look into it.

Furthermore, you know that money can get you virtually undetectable drugs (yes, the same money that other fighters in your weight class don’t have). As Angel Heredia said in an interview (the man who has worked with several Olympic gold medalists and boxing champion Juan Manuel Marquez among others):

“… the only difference is the quality of the doping. Athletes with little money use simple steroids and hope they don’t get tested. The stars earn 50,000 dollars a month, not including starting bonuses and shoe sponsorship contracts. The very best invest 100,000 dollars – I’ll then build you a designer drug that can’t be detected.”

In other words, when drug testing gets stricter, the ones with the most financial resources are able to get away with PED use…

… so now you have a plan, and it’s called:

Hiding in plain sight.

You become an advocate for strict drug testing.

When drug tests become harder to pass, your opponents can either take fewer drugs (which will negatively affect their performance) or purchase designer drugs (but they likely won’t have the money for this).

You, on the other hand, can beat all the tests as long as you know who performs the testing and what they’re testing for. Marion Jones passed over 160 tests in her career without getting caught, and she participated in Olympic-level testing; Lance Armstrong was tested hundreds of times while on the road year-round — including tests by the USADA – and he finally got caught as the USADA tested his old blood samples

Being a “clean” athlete will improve your public image. Your opponents, of course, have talked about your PED use in public before (as if they weren’t on PEDs as well, the hypocrites!), but MMA fans, in general, are clueless regarding what’s going on.

After all, how could the person who advocates strict drug testing take PEDs himself?

Drug Test vs IQ Test

You have a lot of pull within the UFC. You’re now in a position where you can request your opponents to participate in stricter drug testing than what fighters normally go through. You know the ins and outs of this testing program, so you’ll be able to avoid getting caught as usual.

Hell, you’ll even offer to pay for your opponent’s testing. What’s $10,000 when you get to keep your advantage or only lose a little bit of it while your opponent comes in significantly weaker?

The problem is that your opponents have no obligation to agree to your testing program, because why would anyone agree to have their testing arranged by their opponents.

You try to force the opponent to this testing program via public pressure, but it turns on you when the opponent suggests another testing program. That’s difficult. You ask a lot of questions but you’re nervous about being tested by anyone other testing organization than the one you’re a familiar with.

The outcome? Your opponent doesn’t participate in any special testing program. The fight is extremely close and you take a lot of damage. You happen to win it.

But you’re frustrated. Something needs to be done about this, because the fight was too close this time, a re-match is right around the corner and you’re taking way too much damage for your own good.

Here’s an idea: take a break from the sport. You claim to have personal reasons” (hey, they’re “personal,” so you don’t have to go into the specifics), plus, you’re unhappy with the current testing procedures. That’s perfect. You’re such a “clean” athlete that you’re willing to step out of the sport because of the quality of the PED testing.

And here’s the genius part: you’ll have no drug testing for a while.

You finally get to train like a maniac while being able to take every PED known to man without even the slightest fear of getting caught. You feel great. Training goes better than it has in a long time. You might even gain more muscle mass, which is just what the doctor ordered since you got a little bit outmuscled by your previous opponent.

You don’t have a fight scheduled, you’re not a part of the active roster, so there’s not a worry in your mind. Due to your popularity, you keep making millions of dollars. Oh, and the drug testing has gotten stricter.

You’re just waiting for the right moment to step back into the game.

And when you do, you’ll get to keep most of the benefits of your recent PED use, meanwhile your opponent – who has participated in stricter testing for the past few fights and been in wars – will enter the fight weaker than he’s been in a long time.

It’s not a drug test, it’s an IQ test.