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I think this pretty much says it all
My favorite quote...
“I’m not a pharmacologist so I’m not qualified for the UFC. There’s more steroids and drugs in the UFC than the Tour de France. They’d better clean up their act. Because I don’t care if I am 110, it’s disgraceful to be involved in a
so-called sport where every other athlete is using prohibited drugs.
And if he (Dana White doesn’t like it) then let him test the guys before they go into the match, not after, where 50-60% of the guys flunk a drug test”
I'd just like to thank Mr. Arum for allowing me to use one of my favorite quotes from TV ever.
Just when I think you've said the stupidest thing ever, you keep talking
- Hank Hill - King of the Hill
That's after his commentary on UFC race relations wherein he said all it is is a bunch of white wrestlers from the midwest who would get destroyed by any boxer.
Bob Arum is just like Sheiky if you take away Sheiky's charisma, and his coherency...you'd have Arum.
I'd give him a quarter so he could buy a clue but really I don't have that many quarters.
I can't wait for the day when someone tells him its 2007 not 1837.
Now go back to the Springfield Retirement Castle and wait for your mush and tell Abraham Simpson I said hi.
Edit: It was brought to my attention that I didn't do a good enough job of conveying why exactly Arum is a moron. I figured his own words would be sufficient to doom him and that I need not pile on, however I am nothing if not receptive to criticism so I decided to go back and expand this a bit.
Arum charges that 50-60% of the guys flunk a drug test”
.
A quick math lesson for all of you, at UFC 73 there were 9 contested bouts involving 18 fighters. All of them were tested so 100% of the card was tested for drugs and 2 men failed. Hermes Franca admitted to using and Sean Sherk is appealing the test results. Now, if we take 2/18*100 to get the percentage of failures and that number = 11.1%. If Arum were telling the truth, between 9 and 12 fighters would've had to test positive for drugs of one form or another and yet we have 2. When it comes to percentages, 11 and 50 are not exactly close.
Going back to other MMA events in California, (I use that state since everyone on the card is tested) this is what we find.
K-1 Hero's on 06/02/2007, Royce Gracie and Johnny Morton test positive for steroids and Tim Percy tested positive for meth. A 10 fight show with 3 failures. 3/20*100=15%. A few weeks later, on 06/22/2007 Carter Williams tested positive for cocaine at Strikeforce/EXC Destany and Phil Baroni was caught for Steroids. As best I can recall those were the only failure on that show. The show consisted of 13 fights, so 2/26*100 =7.69% and it may be lower because 1 fight ended up not taking place because it was a swing bout and so the number is likely 28 tested but we'll stick with the 26 for simplicity. So between June 2 and July 7 in California we had 3 Major MMA events where everyone was tested 20+26+18 = 64 competitors tested. Of those 64 tests we have 7 failures for 7/64*100 =10.93%. Sure, that's just in 1 state and it is only the 3 big-time events in said state over that amount of time. But, to reach Arum's claim of 50-60 percent failures in UFC that would mean that you'd have to have shows with near 100% failure rates and that never happens and if it did...you'd hear about it.
One last point on this issue in particular. Lets say that the drug rate is 60 percent due to high rates of failures in the minor circuits among guys trying to make their way in to the UFC. That's a pretty big and more than likely incorrect assumption but hypothetically it is true. How is it Dana White's or Zuffa's fault? It isn't written that the UFC needs to police the industry because of high rates of failures on small level shows. Asking UFC to be in charge of drug enforcement in other groups would be asking it to do the job of the state. So Arum couldn't even use the argument that he's talking about the sport of MMA as a whole and not just UFC because it wouldn't hold water. Personally, I think that to Arum there is no difference between UFC and MMA.
Moving on to his next most incorrect statement in this quote anyway Arum had said: if he (Dana White doesn’t like it) then let him test the guys before they go into the match, not after,
This implies that Dana White is in control of how testing is done which is something I'm sure the CSAC and other state commissions that test would find to be newsworthy. Arum should surely realize that boxers and MMA fighters are tested in exactly the same way. Furthermore, it is my understanding in California that you have to provide pre and post fight samples and if that's the case for MMA guys it would also be the case for boxers. So either Arum is completely ignorant of how fighters in his own sport are tested or else he's a hipocrit for suggesting even harsher tests for MMA than he would have for boxing.
You want to know the real reason that doesn't get talked about for why there seem to be a fair share of fighters failing drug tests in MMA these days? You have a lot more shows now and a lot more people are being tested. California didn't see MMA regulated until 2006 and it is the toughest commission state where as I said everyone is tested. That factor in and of itself is enough to explain in part a rise in failures. But, guys are failing and being caught and actually being punished so to me that suggests that the system is at least partially doing its job.
The real question is why guys who know they're going to be tested (in California it isn't random so there's no doubt) are still failing the tests. That's not a question for UFC or any other fight organization to answer but for the fighters themselves.
Could more be done? Sure, just because the rise in failures can in part be explained by the rise in events doesn't mean that you can just leave it at that otherwise you've got another pro wrestling industry on your hands willing to just ignore the problem and pretend it is gone.
It was once famously suggested that it is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Arum was clearly not wise enough to take those words to heart as his statements weren't just a little bit off but completely wrong, and thus he ends up on the moron list.
However, if you think that my calling him a moron is the worst thing I could call him, listen to this week's combat-hooligans.com show. I've got a charge far more severe than him being a moron but I'm still building my case for that and will save it for audio. The difference between him and I is that I'm aabout to make a charge about Arum himself but unlike him, I won't do so until I've got the facts and evidence I need to support my thesis.
Stumble it!
