UFC President Dana White recently detailed the difficulty of testing for PEDs in a worldwide league with a frequently rotating group of 375 fighters.

“The general public and the media need to grasp some f——- concept of reality,” said White, using a lot of f-bombs, even for him. “The reality of us doing all the f—— things that we’re doing when we already have the gold standard in drug testing, and then f—— try to chase 375 guys all over the world to randomly test them, too? It’s impossible. You look at all the other organizations, … you look at all the other companies that have tried to do what we do, nobody can f——- do it. You know why? Because this job is insane.”

The recent difficulty of testing Alistair Overeem alone serves to illustrate the point, but current Bellator welterweight champion Ben Askren, no stranger to controversy himself, took issue with White’s characterisation, via twitter.

@Benaskren

The USOC random tests Olympic athletes in all sports. Dana saying testing his fighters would be impossible is a bold faced lie.

The remarks were brought to White’s attention who for once did not hold his feelings back, but simply tweeted his mind.

thefightweek

@Benaskren says @danawhite is a bold face liar for saying the #UFC doesn’t have the resources for random drug tests

@danawhite

@thefightweek @benaskren when ambien can’t sleep it takes Ben Askren. The most boring fighter in MMA history. I would rather watch flys f—

Askren expanded on his comments in an interview with FCFighter.

“Dana could have said a lot of things, but what he said was a lie,” sadi Askren. “He could have said it’s going to be a very expensive system, we just don’t have the excess capital for it right now which would have been totally true and reasonable. The UFC isn’t obliged by any means to do that testing. If they did it, would it be awesome? Yes. Is it impossible? No.”

“Say the UFC has 400 fighters, say they test five percent of their fighters every quarter…testing 20 people every three months is probably not that expensive. Now fighters would have to look at it and say I have a five percent chance of getting tested for performance enhancing drugs. It’s not a very good chance that you’re going to get tested, but when you don’t know when the drug tester is going to come knocking on their door and make you pee in a cup, are you going to take that chance? That’s a risky proposition.”

Askren is also a two-time Div I wrestling champion and former U.S. Olympic wrestling team member.