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UFC 244 is all set to be one of the biggest shows of 2019 – but as of writing, the main event is currently up in the air thanks to some controversy surrounding one half of the fight, the always-popular bad boy Nate Diaz.
Diaz – renowned for being a clean-living athlete, aside from his outspoken endorsement of marijuana – has supposedly tested positive for trace amounts of a “prohibited selective androgen receptor”.
The UFC has yet to confirm whether the fight is still on, although ESPN has reported that USADA has not yet provisionally suspended Diaz. This isn’t the first time, though, that drug tests have placed questions marks over big fights in the UFC.
Here are 5 other times that drug tests have placed major UFC fights in jeopardy – and what happened.
#1 UFC 47: Tim Sylvia vs. Andrei Arlovski
Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski went on to have one of the most storied rivalries in the history of the UFC Heavyweight division, but the planned first meeting between the two actually ended up being cancelled under dubious circumstances.
A fight between the two was first mooted back at UFC 44, when Sylvia defended his UFC Heavyweight title successfully against Gan McGee, while Arlovski knocked out Vladimir Matyushenko. But in the aftermath of the show, Sylvia tested positive for the banned substance stanozolol and was handed a six-month suspension, forcing him to vacate the title.
Seven months later, a fight between Sylvia and Arlovski was put together for the vacant title, but the day before the show, news emerged that Sylvia would not be able to fight. It was then revealed that he’d tested positive for stanozolol again – but this time with a bit of a twist.
In a precursor to the Jon Jones situation of 2018, the UFC announced that Sylvia’s positive test actually stemmed from the initial dose of the drug he’d admittedly taken the year prior, and hadn’t quite cleaned out of his system in time. That wasn’t enough to save the fight, though – and Arlovski fought Wesley Correira on the undercard instead, and had to wait another year to face Sylvia.
#2 UFC 141: Alistair Overeem vs. Brock Lesnar
When the UFC signed Alistair Overeem – one of the hottest fighters in the world – and matched him against fellow behemoth Brock Lesnar on the final show of 2011, UFC 141, the MMA world was salivating. In a bizarre set of circumstances though, the promotion almost lost the fight entirely following an anomalous drug test result from Overeem during the build to the fight.
Both Overeem and Lesnar were required by the Nevada State Athletic Commission to provide samples for out-of-competition drug testing a month prior to the fight, and while Lesnar’s came back fine, Overeem’s apparently did not meet the commission’s standards. The NSAC demanded he submit a second sample, but as he was about to head back to his native Netherlands to attend to his sick mother, ‘The Reem’ used his personal physician to test him and provided the Commission with the results.
That didn’t sit well with the NSAC, and for a few days it looked like the fight would be scrapped. But just weeks before the event, the Commission met and decided to award Overeem a “conditional license” to fight, with the fighter being told to submit another pre-fight test as well as further, extra post-fight drug tests less than six months after the bout.
For their part, the NSAC stated they believed that Overeem was a clean athlete – and so the fight went ahead, with the Dutchman stopping Lesnar by TKO in the first round. Unfortunately, it would not be the first time that anomalous drug tests would throw fights involving Overeem into jeopardy.
#3 UFC 200: Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier
The main event of UFC 200 was always fraught; the promotion initially announced the rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz would headline the event, but when McGregor refused to go along with the UFC’s pre-event media obligations, the Irishman was pulled from the card. With that big fight gone, the UFC pulled out another rabbit from their hat – booking a rematch between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier in the main event, with the UFC Light Heavyweight title on the line.
Three days before the event, though, everything went wrong once again. The UFC announced that Jones had been pulled out by USADA due to a potential anti-doping violation stemming from a pre-fight drug test taken a month prior to the event. Jones denied the violation and at one point it appeared that he could be cleared, but when his ‘B’ sample tested positive for the same substance, the fight was scrapped entirely.
With that, former UFC Middleweight champion Anderson Silva stepped in to fight Cormier in a non-title fight on just two days' notice, while the UFC Women’s Bantamweight title fight between Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes was elevated into the main event slot.
It wasn’t the end of the controversy, though; days after the event it was announced that Brock Lesnar – who fought Mark Hunt on the undercard – had also tested positive for a banned substance in a pre-fight drug test taken just 12 days after the positive test that Jones had submitted. Quite why Lesnar was allowed to fight while Jones wasn’t, remains somewhat of a mystery today.
#4 UFC 146: Junior Dos Santos vs. Alistair Overeem
Just five months after defeating Brock Lesnar in his UFC debut – following some pre-fight controversy surrounding his drug tests – Alistair Overeem was handed a shot at the UFC Heavyweight title, as the Dutchman was booked to fight champion Junior Dos Santos in the main event of UFC 146. Unfortunately, Overeem’s issues with drug tests weren’t done just yet.
Around seven weeks before the event, the Nevada State Athletic Commission announced that once again, Overeem was in hot water. This time he’d failed a pre-fight drug test for elevated testosterone levels; the Dutchman tested 14:1 for his testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio – way over the NSAC’s allowed ratio of 6:1.
Overeem attempted to defend himself by stating via a lawyer that he’d unknowingly raised his testosterone levels by using a prescribed anti-inflammatory medication that may have contained testosterone, but even before his case came before the Commission, the UFC pulled him and replaced him with Frank Mir.
In the end, it didn’t matter; the NSAC denied Overeem’s request for a license to fight and prevented him from reapplying for it until December 2012 – some six months after UFC 146. Dos Santos defeated Mir in the main event of the show – and we had to wait until December 2015 for a fight between Overeem and ‘Cigano’.
#5 UFC 232: Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson
The final UFC show of 2018, UFC 232 saw perhaps the most controversial drug testing incident in UFC history, as the entire show ended up being moved from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Los Angeles, California, following the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s refusal to license Jon Jones for his UFC Light-Heavyweight title fight with Alexander Gustafsson.
Jones had actually been suspended since July 2017 following a positive test for the banned substance turanibol after defeating Daniel Cormier to regain the Light-Heavyweight crown, but despite being cleared to compete at UFC 232, controversy struck just six days before the event was scheduled to take place.
Jones was flagged by a pre-fight drug test for the same banned substance that he’d tested positive for in 2017 – turanibol – but despite being out of action for 15 months, both USADA and the UFC suggested that the positive test was caused by the initial dose of the substance – with PED expert Jeff Novitzky stating that he felt it was a “pulsing” effect rather than a new ingestion of the drug.
Rather than pull Jones from the event, the UFC instead moved the event to Los Angeles, as the California State Athletic Commission were willing to license Jones where Nevada’s equivalent were not. To say the move was controversial would be an understatement, as many of the fighters due to compete on the show’s undercard were extremely unhappy.
In the end, the show went ahead, though – and Jones stopped Gustafsson in the third round of their fight to reclaim his title.
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