Nicky Rodriguez is one of the best BJJ competitors in the world right now and he recently shared his thoughts on the topic of introducing testing for PEDs to the sport. It’s quite a hot topic at the moment as the sport begins to garner mainstream attention, as it’s never been much of a priority for promotions in the past. The IBJJF tests a few dozen athletes every year when they win a major event, but outside of that the sport is essentially untested. This has led to a culture of rampant use in Jiu-Jitsu and some of the most successful competitors of all time like Gordon Ryan have been open about using PEDs.
Rodrigue stands in stark contrast to that though and he is one of the most vocal about not using them himself. In fact, he even submitted to voluntary testing to prove he was clean a few years ago and publicly released the results. He’s far from the only big name in the sport who have come out against the use of PEDs of course, and several of the grapplers competing at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 10 shared similar thoughts on the topic. As one half of the main event match, Rodriguez was also asked for a statement on the prevalence of PEDs in Jiu-Jitsu:
“I just think that using performance enhancing drugs probably takes away from, you know, the purity of the sport in the sense of how good your technique is, how athletic you really are because you can just overpower somebody. And also like a lot of these guys can just take steroids and not necessarily work out and build muscle. That’s kind of like, I mean that sounds like cheating, right?”
Not only did Nicky Rodriguez make it clear that he wasn’t in favor of using PEDs, but he also used the opportunity to petition for increased testing too:
”I would love it if every competition in Jiu-Jitsu was drug tested vigorously and I look forward to the day that the UFC commits to that.”
It was a brave move to mention the UFC by name, but the world’s biggest combat sports promotion does stand in the best position to effect real change in Jiu-Jitsu. They’ve always shown an interest in the sport by broadcasting events like Polaris and Quintet on UFC Fight Pass, but they’ve taken an even bigger role in recent years. Their in-house grappling promotion has gone from strength to strength and now regularly features the most popular stars in the sport. They’re now poised to grow even further and potentially become the biggest stage for Jiu-Jitsu competitors, so testing is something has to come up a lot during backroom discussions.
The full interview with Nicky Rodriguez and the other stars of UFC Fight Pass Invitational 10 where they discuss testing for PEDs was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAFighting:
