The UFC has received some serious criticism for its drug testing policies, of late from former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre. According to UFC owner Lorenzo Fertita, the UFC is venturing into new territory with random drug testing. According to Lorenzo Fertita, they are going to be embracing random testing in the future, paying for it themselves but having no hand in it, to keep it fair. [source]
“I think it’s going to be something that continues to happen on a pretty regular basis going forward,” UFC chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told SI.com on Monday evening.
“We’ve always tried to do whatever we can to embrace and encourage the commissions to test as much as they possibly can,” said Fertitta. “Unfortunately for most commissions, they’re restrained from a budgetary standpoint. They just don’t have the resources to handle random testing because there’s a lot more that goes into how it’s done. In order for the program to be successful, it truly needs to be random and it needs to be pretty in-depth.”
“We have nothing to do with the testing other than they send us a bill to pay for it. That’s it,” he said. “It’s all done third party, all done the right way. They get the results sent directly to them and then they deal with the situation, the fighter. It’s out of our hands.”