MMA

Mirko Cro Cop Ain’t No Snitch, Rips USADA For Asking Him to Be a Narc

MMA


We’ve been talking a lot lately about how weird the last few years have been for MMA drug testing. Thai sex drugs? Tainted kangaroo meat? Estrogen blockers? Cows with asthma? So many funny stories. Unfortunately, while these are all funny stories, there are people taking those Thai sex drugs and eating that tainted kangaroo meat and, when they’re caught by USADA, they have children and wives that are going to have a tougher life as a result.




Roided up kangaroo meat may have been what led to a failed Frank Mir drug test. That's both funny and sad.

Roided up kangaroo meat may have been what led to a failed Frank Mir drug test. That’s both funny and sad.

But while there are a lot of stories with serious gray areas and questionable decision making, there’s one fighter that plain-and-simple got screwed over by the USADA era. That fighter is the legendary Croation kickboxer Mirko Cro Cop.

He of the “right leg hospital, left leg cemetery” was suspended by the UFC’s drug fuhrers not for failing a drug test…but for admitting that he had received a legal, doctor-administered HGH treatment to heal an injured shoulder. While admitting that he received a legally prescribed and safely administered treatment should logically result in a softer punishment, if not a free pass, he was instead hammered with a two year suspension…and that was despite the fact that he passed drug tests administered after the admission.

"IF THIS GOOF DOESN'T WANT TO FAIL DRUG TESTS, MAYBE HE SHOULD STOP SEEING DOCTORS!" --Dana White, Probably

“IF THIS GOOF DOESN’T WANT TO FAIL DRUG TESTS, MAYBE HE SHOULD STOP SEEING DOCTORS!” –Dana White, Probably

That doesn’t sit well with Mirko, and he popped off in a big way on the MMA Hour. Here’s the quote:

“The whole thing that happened with USADA, it just isn’t supposed to happen. It just isn’t supposed to happen. I could be warned. I could be, at the end of the day, suspended a few months. Six months, whatever. But when your test comes completely negative and you suspend that person for two years, the same sentence like some other fighters who was caught after the fight, so they did the fight under doping, under prohibited substances that was found in their body. And they get the same suspension? That isn’t justice.”

Cro Cop went a step further and brought up the Brock Lesnar controversy, which stems from the UFC allegedly taking a number of different measures to ensure that Lesnar could fight at UFC 200 despite the fact that he was using PEDs, saying “they put the money in their pocket, they fought, they earned the money and they get the same sentence like I did. It’s not fair.”

Lesnar was popped for banned substances at UFC 200, after the UFC gave him a waiver on USADA rules and decided not to expedite a drug test. Photo by Sherdog.

Lesnar was popped for banned substances at UFC 200, after the UFC gave him a waiver on USADA rules and decided not to expedite a drug test. Photo by Sherdog.

The biggest news from his interview are allegations that USADA asked him to snitch on some of his training partners in exchange for a softer sentence. That doesn’t sit well for him:

“Offering a fighter that the suspension will be reduced if I snitched on someone, it is below every level. That’s how I see it. If I’m guilty punish me, but don’t come with that kind of offer. And if you punish me for being completely negative, which means i didn’t use any prohibited substance, you cannot give me the same punish [as others].”

The good news is that Cro Cop is actually better off for all this.

Cro Cop requested, and received, his UFC release after getting flagged by USADA, and has since signed a tasty deal with Japan’s Rizin FF. He’ll be fighting in their upcoming openweight grand prix alongside fighters like Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva and Kazuyuki Fujita and won’t have to deal with nonsense like the Reebok deal and UFC media obligations.

We’re rooting for ya, Mirko!


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