Dana White says UFC scrapped plans for out of competition drug testing after botching Cung Le drug test

When the UFC announced somewhat unplanned and last minute drug testing for the Macao card that was headlined by Michael Bisping and Cung Le, it appears that was the beginning of he end for the UFC's plans for out of competition drug testing.

The UFC would announce that Le had failed his drug test after HGH was detected in a post-fight blood sample and a nine month suspension was announced. Then the UFC upped it to twelve months. Le planned to appeal the suspension but it was eventually dropped entirely.

Today, Dana White said that the UFC scrapped their plans to run out of competition testing and cited the test and the change from nine months to twelve months for the suspension (a request from Lorenzo Fertitta who felt nine months was too light of a punishment) as the reason that the promotion had decided to scrap the out of competition testing altogether.

Jeremy Botter of Bleacher Report had some information about the situation from today's media event:

"Our legal team completed screwed that up. We f----d it up, and we will f--k it up again. That's what the commission is there for," he said.

White continued by saying that, while they have come to the realization that the promotion cannot oversee its own drug testing program, Zuffa will instead give more money to athletic commisions to help fund additional testing.

"What we'll do is we'll help fund it, so they can do more drug testing," he said. "Our legal department screwed that whole thing up. We've got no business handling the regulation."

White also went a little further:

White also said Le was 18 times the limit for HGH. Four other guys tested on same card and nobody else was high.

— Jeremy Botter (@jeremybotter) January 1, 2015

Bloody Elbow ran an article featuring some anti-doping experts casting significant doubt on the method of testing used and the results of the test (as well as the UFC's decision to not use a WADA accredited lab 3 hours away from the lab they did choose to use):

There are currently two different tests being used by the World Anti­ Doping Agency (WADA) to detect hGH use. The hGH "Isoform Differential Immunoassays" test is used to determine the presence of exogenous (meaning from an outside source) hGH in the system. That test is used in conjunction with a test for serum IGF­1 levels.

The other hGH test is known as the Biomarker test. According to the Hong Kong lab report reviewed by this reporter, none of these sports doping hGH tests were conducted on Cung Le's blood sample.

Instead, the Hong Kong lab took a reading of Le's total hGH concentration, which by itself cannot determine if the subject has used exogenous hGH or not.

For a male who has fasted and rested for 12 hours prior to giving a blood sample to be tested, [proper protocol], the normal range is 0­5 ng/mL. For an athlete giving a sample after strenuous activity such as a fight, the expected range is 20­-30 ng/mL. Le's reading was a bit below 20 ng/mL, which is actually lower than the expected post­-exercise reference range.

The lab also destroyed Le's B sample, eliminating the chance of both a confirmation test and any possibility of having the sample ran through the WADA testing protocols to test for the presence of HGH:

"Every sample requires an A and a B analysis," said Ings. "The B sample is the confirmation test of the A sample analysis. No B sample means no ADRV (Anti­-Doping Rules Violation) is possible."

As for the "elevated hGH levels" finding of the Hong Kong lab, Ings said "[This case] would never stand up at appeal at CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport)." CAS, which is considered the supreme court of sport’s doping, is the third party venue used when an athlete wishes to challenge a positive test result.

White also told reporters that he believes the failed drug test is the reason behind Le's participation in the recently announced class action lawsuit against the UFC.