MMA veteran Jake Shields recently shared his thoughts on the prevalence of PEDS in BJJ, but he feels surprisingly mixed about it. He has a pretty unique experience as he comes from a generation of elite MMA fighters that competed in the sport both when it was untested and after testing first came in to place. He knows firsthand what it feels like to compete against someone on PEDs and the difference that proper testing actually makes. Jiu-Jitsu has a similar situation to what MMA used to have before where it really is the wild west, and hardly any organizations conduct any testing at all.
Shields has competed in the highest level of grappling himself too, at ADCC and at a number of other major professional events over the years. When asked about his thoughts on the fact that many BJJ stars are using PEDs, Jake Shields explained that wasn’t fully against it even though he didn’t use them himself:
“I’m very mixed because like… I’m torn because part of it’s like we were never doing any drugs when we were doing it, I know a lot of the guys we were competing against were so it sucks. But it’s almost like, if there was no rules then are we gonna say ‘f**k it!’ and just get juiced out myself and just let everyone do it? So I don’t know, I go back and forth.”
Although Shields says he never used any PEDs himself, Dillon Danis previously accused him of offering them to him in the past. He wouldn’t be the first athlete to deny using them only to be found doing so later on, but Danis is also known as an unreliable narrator too. To finish off his thoughts on the topic, Shields echoed statements that Gordon Ryan has made in the past:
“You either gotta have really good, really strict testing or none at all. Because otherwise it totally, really makes it unfair. So either everyone’s on it or they’ve gotta find a way to make sure no-one’s on it, because if a few people are on it then it becomes a big problem.”
The full interview with Jake Shields where he gives his thoughts on the use of PEDs in BJJ was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Jaxxon podcast:
