"In Lamont Peterson's case, he was misinformed by a physician, horribly misinformed by a physician, or in Andre Berto's case, he took a supplement that was tainted. And the reason I think in Andre Berto's case, the supplement that he took was tainted is by what his test came back positive for. Trace amounts of Nandrolone. Nandrolone is the worst steroid that a person looking to use a performance-enhancing drug can ever use... if a person is trying to cheat and get away with it, nobody in their right mind would take Nandrolone. And they didn't find Nandrolone in a quantity where here is a guy trying to cheat. They found Nandrolone in a quantity of a trace. What that tells me is, whatever company was making his supplements was also, at night time after hours, were making some substances that contain Nandrolone," stated renowned combat sports specialist Dr. Johnny Benjamin, who shared his thoughts on the reasons why Lamont Peterson and Andre Berto ended up testing positive for banned substances. You don't want to miss what he had to say. Check it out!
PC: Both boxing and MMA seems to be going through a lot as far as PEDs are concerned. Why do you think that is?
DB: I think boxing and MMA are going through growing pains because now the choices that they make and the people that they involve in their camps are being held to a level of scrutiny by a science that they never had before. And what I mean by that is boxers did all kinds of things as a part of tradition and history. All of the old guys around the gym with that, "this is how it's always been done around the gym," and so forth. And a lot of that was just tradition and it didn't have a lot to do with science. Now, when you have high-tech science, VADA testing, and so on and so forth, against these old school boxing traditions, it's starting to have some problems and some growing pains. What I mean by that is, guys have taken supplements for a long time because they thought they gained some kind of benefit from it. But the real question is, and the one thing they never really thought of is, what's in that supplement? Are the people and the company that manufacture that supplement as legitimate as you think they are and are their standards of production as rigorous as you think they are? Many people haven't really thought about that. Many people just trust whatever the package on the label says and they don't think any more about it. But unfortunately, with the testing, it's showing just because that label says one thing, that doesn't mean that's absolutely 100% what's in that package.
PC: You are right about that, and I think a lot of athletes are finding that out.
DB: And then you see people saying, "Why are they saying this stuff is contaminated?" The first question you have to ask yourself is, "Is a guy acting like a cheater?" What I mean by that is you gotta have some amount of common sense. Would a guy who is knowingly cheating with a performance enhancing drug be standing up and demanding scientific scrutiny with voluntary anti-doping associations? I mean, that to me is an analogy to a guy who is importing cocaine or smuggling cocaine, and as he is coming through customs, standing up to the customs officer and saying, "Hey, I really need you to check me." that wouldn't happen. For you to try and do it, you would do it with as little scrutiny as possible and see if you could just beat the system. That challenges common sense to say a guy that is knowingly cheating is the guy who is demanding testing.
PC: I'll ask you some of the questions I have been getting. When you bring in a high-dollar strength and conditioning coach or a high-dollar nutritionist, in other words Doc, if I come to you and I'm paying you good money, aren't I supposed to be able to trust the advice you give me or does the fighter have some responsibility in this as well of knowing what goes in their body?
DB: They have to know what's put inside of their body because they are held to a philosophy that's called, "Captain of the ship." That means whatever goes down your vessel, the captain goes down with the ship. So at the end of the day, you can put all of your trust in me if you are comfortable with going down with the ship. If you think, "You know what? I trust the doc that much that I'm willing to let him take my ship down," then that's fine. You can have that level of trust, but be prepared to go down with the ship if the ship starts taking water. And the real question, when you trust a person to that degree when you have established yourself is, is this person willing to net their whole reputation on it? And the thing that I tell these guys is, if you don't do what your doctor tells you to, don't hold your doctor responsible. If he tells you, "Don't put a thing in your body until I've tested it or until I tell you to take it," and then you decide for whatever reason you're going to take something anyway, take that on the chin. You can't hold somebody responsible if you don't do what they tell you to 100% of the time. But if you do everything that he told you to do and just the way that he told you to do it and you go down, then the doctor needs to step up and the doctor needs to say, "I told him to do X, Y and Z and that's the reason his test came back positive and I am absolutely responsible for that." And these athletes need to ask their doctors on the front end, "Hey doc, I need to know from you right now, man to man, if I do exactly what you tell me to do and I test positive, you're going to step up to the plate?"
PC: And that's one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you because looking at some of your tweets, you seem to feel bad for Lamont Peterson because you feel he was misinformed and got some bad advice from a doctor.
DB: I feel absolutely terrible for Lamont because I feel that's what happened. Now, does Lamont have some responsibility? Sure he does, but his responsibility is of a reasonable athlete, and if a reasonable athlete goes to a doctor and says, "Hey, I'm having these problems, X, Y and Z, what should I do," and the doctor says, "I would do this treatment," you need to mention to that doctor, "Hey doc, I am a professional athlete and I am held to these standards. You need to assure me that nothing that you are suggesting violates these banned substances and puts my career in jeopardy." If that doctor did just that, then you have to look at your relationship with that doctor and that's what Lamont did to the best of my knowledge. He asked the doctor, "Hey, you know I'm a professional athlete under this Olympic style random testing. Anything that you do to me or suggest to me has to be 100% acceptable to these organizations and it can't be on the banned substance list." I don't believe the doctor had any intent to misinform him. I just think the doctor didn't know any better, and I think the doctor was practicing the type of medicine that he really wasn't qualified to practice. And if he didn't know, he should have told Lamont, "Hey Lamont, I really never done this before," or he should have called the agency and told them exactly what he was doing and the agency would tell you what needs to be done. Those things did not happen, so the doctor did not properly inform Lamont, so Lamont could not make a reasonable decision.
PC: In both mixed martial arts and boxing, this is beginning to be a wide-spread problem. You hear so much about TRT in MMA, and two major fights being canceled in boxing due to positive test. How big of a problem do you think this is and can it get under control before it gets out of control?
DB: It's a huge problem in mixed martial arts and boxing, and it can get under control, but there will be a lot more growing pains because a lot of times, people don't really want to listen to the people that's giving them good advice, and if you don't follow the advice, then don't tell me I'm a bad doctor or I gave you bad advice if you don't follow it. Guys get complacent and lazy and wanna cut corners. And I don't mean cut corners as far as cheating. I mean as in following instructions that I give you. A lot of times, they will say, "Come on doc, you're killing me with all that. I don't need to do all of that kind of stuff." You don't have to do all of that kind of stuff, but you need to do all of that kind of stuff if you don't want to see your career ruined. The perfect example to me would be Andre Berto, a kid that I love a great deal. He had Victor Conte on the side who basically told him, "If I don't tell you to take it or if I haven't tested it, don't put it in your system or in your mouth, or don't let it touch your body in any way, shape, form or fashion." So he had the knowledge. But the problem is, guys will say, "Well, I can take this energy drink. I just thought you meant this over here." That's when you are allowing yourself to test positive for a banned substance from a contaminated supplement or energy drink, or whatever the case may be. And then people wonder how that can happen and it happens very simple. What happens is these companies that manufacture supplements, by day, they create supplements X, Y and Z, which is sold over the counter, which everybody takes, and it's fine; no problems. But at night, they make another product that has steroids in it. Now, they don't clean the equipment properly between batches, the non-steroid substances and banned substances, and a little dust or residue is left in the machine. They didn't clean and test properly and now you have trace amounts in a substance that you can purchase over the counter. It's not a lot, but the problem is, with this Olympic-style and WADA and VADA-style testing, they find trace amounts. And when I say trace amounts, they find amounts in substances that are the equivalent of two drops in an Olympic-size swimming pool. That's how sensitive it is. They are not saying, "Oh, you have a ton of this in you." They are saying trace amounts, which is two drops in an Olympic-size swimming pool. Now I got you; you're positive.
PC: Again, I'm gonna ask a question I was asked. You don't think in any way, shape or form, VADA is an unreliable source of testing because of these positive results, right?
DB: No, 100% not, and this is the reason I say so. If VADA wants to grow and they want to be known as the standard for testing, how could they have any questions of what they are doing. See, VADA has no dog in the fight. VADA doesn't care what your sample comes back as. They don't even want to know whose sample it is until it tests positive. Their whole goal is to check samples. They don't care what happens to your career and they don't care who you are. They can't care because if they did, that would mean they would have some kind of interest in the outcome, which they cannot. So people are looking for conspiracies and if VADA did something wrong. Not at all. VADA did their job the way they were supposed to do their job and unfortunately, guys that I thinkĀ
in Lamont Peterson's case, he was misinformed by a physician, horribly misinformed by a physician, or in Andre Berto's case, he took a supplement that was tainted. And the reason I think in Andre Berto's case, the supplement that he took was tainted is by what his test came back positive for. Trace amounts of Nandrolone. Nandrolone is the worst steroid that a person looking to use a performance-enhancing drug can ever use. And the reason I say that is Nandrolone is so humidifying in testing, because they test it per trillion, so it's an extremely sensitive test they use. And Nandrolone lasts 18 months. So if you were going to try and use something before your fight that was gonna be out of your system, I hope you don't plan on fighting again in your career if you're taking Nandrolone because it lasts too damn long. If you look at something like Testosterone, you're looking at a day. Nandrolone, you're looking at months. You can't possibly think you're taking Nandrolone and ever gonna past a test because one, the tests are so sensitive, they are gonna find two drops in an Olympic-size swimming pool, and two, the stuff lasts so damn long, you're not going to fight again in this century. So to believe that someone who has two brain cells functioning is gonna use Nandrolone to cheat, are you crazy? They would truly have to be crazy. So if a person is trying to cheat and get away with it, nobody in their right mind would take Nandrolone. And they didn't find Nandrolone in a quantity where here is a guy trying to cheat. They found Nandrolone in a quantity of a trace. What that tells me is, whatever company was making his supplements was also, at night time after hours, were making some substances that contain Nandrolone. When you clean your equipment, you are supposed to test the equipment and make sure that the equipment is not contaminated with anything. It's a hurry; you are trying to do it fast and everything looks good and you didn't run all of the test and you start running for the regular stuff again and you got a little bit of Nandrolone residue at some point in that facility contaminated a huge batch of products from one batch to another. That's what he was found positive for. When you find it in that small of an amount with a substance like Nandrolone, it's contaminant.
PC: I know you are a busy man. I appreciate your time and I will definitely be in touch with you as all of this stuff settles.
DB: You got the number now so call me anytime. No problem!
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]