The much-awaited UFC 232 has been shifted from Las Vegas from the state of Nevada to Los Angeles, California after a very abnormal finding in his drug test forced the Nevada State Athletic Commission not giving Jon Jones a license to compete for this weekend’s mega fight against Alexander Gustafsson.
According to NSAC, a recent urine sample collected from the American led to an abnormal finding. Jone Jones’s urine sample found traces of Turinabol in his system. This is the same drugs he got banned for when he tested positive for it last year after he won his fight against Daniel Cormier at UFC 214. He was later suspended for 15-months.
According to ESPN, the USADA determined Jones’s positive test this time around was because of a residual amount of the substance that lingered in Jones’s system from 2017.
United States Anti-doping agency notified NSAC about an extremely low amount of prohibited substance in Jones’s system from a sample taken on Dec. 9 which according to USADA is “consistent with residual amounts from his prior exposure for which he was previously sanctioned.”
The sample was collected out-of-competition and is 4-chloro-18-nor-17β-hydroxymethyl,17α-methyl-5α-androst-13-en-3α-ol (M3).
However. former UFC heavyweight contender Frank Mir now has pointed to USADA’s inconsistency as he made parallels between his own case and that of his fellow ex-UFC champion Jones. Mir was flagged for testing positive for dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (DHCMT), Frank Mir was handed a two-year suspension by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialFrankMir/posts/1133291700173350?__tn__=-R
He wrote on Facebook:
“In the spring of 2016, when USADA representatives sat in my Las Vegas kitchen and told me that the turinabol metabolite that they said I tested positive for could only have been ingested within a window of the past several months, I vehemently proclaimed my innocence. Having never failed any drug test throughout my career, I asked if we could go back further in the past to test any supplements that I could’ve taken, but they claimed that was both impossible and unnecessary. They were firm on their assertion that there was only a recent period of several months that would warrant any consideration. Now, little more than two years later, Jon Jones has tested positive for the same trace of the same banned substance, and USADA is taking the position that this same low level is in fact not a new ingestion, but something that could be the result of a residual “pulsing” effect that could potentially stay in his system “forever”. Further, they are now claiming that this phenomenon is something that they are seeing in other cases as well.
This latest shift in USADA’s position would seem to suggest one of two possibilities…Either they are a) offering special dispensation to Jon Jones or b) they are second guessing and subsequently “revising” the presentation of their own science. Either scenario leaves myself and a number of other fighters whose careers have been similarly damaged by past testing claims to wonder what this says about USADA’s consistency and their tests’ reliability. Sadly, my accusation came at a time when the UFC’s partnership with USADA had not yet been subjected to the kind of doubt that now seems to further cloud it with each new instance of convoluted circumstances.”
This clearly shows how inconsistent USADA is with its drug testing and how favouritism is given to the top commercially viable athletes.
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