Polaris has just become the first major grappling promotion outside of the IBJJF to announce an official policy to combat the usage of PEDs. They will now be taking a very tough stance on the topic compared to the majority of other professional grappling promotions, as most simply ignore the presence of PEDs in the sport. At present, the IBJJF is the only organization that tests athletes and even then, they only test the winners of each adult black belt division at the IBJJF World Championship. Shockingly, even with testing as predictable as this they have still managed to catch multiple athletes over the years.
This just shows how rampant the use of PEDs is in the sport, especially considering that testing is nowhere to be seen in any other promotion. ADCC head Mo Jassim has openly said ‘it’s not even on my radar’ when asked about testing, and cited how expensive proper testing programs can be. One of the biggest issues in the sport isn’t just the fact that athletes aren’t tested in most competitions, but also the fact that suspensions only apply to IBJJF competition anyway. This creates a strange scenario where athletes are known to have tested positive for PEDs and are serving a suspension from IBJJF competition, but can be seen competing at ADCC or in superfights.
This creates the impression that the BJJ community agrees with, or at least doesn’t care, about athletes using PEDs. Nothing could be further from the truth though. There are a number of competitors who will happily take advantage of the situation but there are also plenty of them speaking out against it as well. In fact, some very big names in the BJJ world have used their position in the sport to attempt to drive it in a positive direction. Just recently, Lachlan Giles decided to enforce testing when distributing money from a fund aimed at supporting Australian BJJ athletes.
Now it seems like Polaris are publicly joining that movement too, as they’ve announced an official policy to combat the use of PEDs by honoring any suspensions that athletes are given. According to the recent press release, this has been the promotion’s unofficial policy in the past but they have decided to make it public now. They’ve also revealed that they will be exploring the idea of conducting their own testing too, something that will no doubt have a huge impact on earning opportunities for athletes who use PEDs.
Gordon Ryan has claimed that a single promotion testing for PEDs would ‘pretty much crush that organization’, but Polaris have already thought of an answer to that problem as well. In the announcement of their official policy, they’ve also openly encouraged other grappling promotions to follow suit. It remains to be seen whether any other organizers will take the same approach that Polaris have, but a bold move like this could have a massive impact on just how clean the sport actually is.
Polaris announced their official policy on the usage of PEDs in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
