Eddie Alvarez has yet again vehemently expressed his discontent about the PED situation in the sport. He asserts that only a lifetime ban of athletes indulging in these forbidden practices can help fix this situation. The former UFC lightweight champion has always been strongly against fighters doping in the game and flaunts a clean career record with more than 3o clean tests combined in the UFC and Bellator.
Alvarez’s moots an approach of sanctioning a lifetime ban to violators, which may not be the required magic bullet for this conundrum. Take the case of UFC’s renown fighter Nick Diaz, who has been banned for five years from the game for alleged consumption of a cannabis product during the test period. Or take Jon Johns, who missed a part of his prime career due to alleged doping charges, which has been now found to be a result of snorting cocaine which was apparently cut from Chinese creatine.
My argument really is there are too many intangibles in fighting to even know the degree in which peds help or don’t help . But it is a game a inches and people’s lives are at risk even when fighters are clean . To add drugs to the mix is super dangerous. Any user should be ban
— Eddie Alvarez (@Ealvarezfight) September 13, 2018
The issue of Bones and Diaz are a few among many such cases in which banning destroyed fighters career. Our Justice system upholds the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the concept of ‘benefit of the doubt’. Personally, I feel that a lifetime ban is too much a draconian law to be made the standard norm in these uncertain times. I feel we should adhere to the old legal adage ‘Let a hundred guilty be acquitted, but one innocent should not be convicted’ and put a stop to ending fighters career based on arbitrary claims and give a lifetime ban for the rarest of rare cases only.
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