Joe Rogan on the Jon Jones Picogram Situation

Well, that is huge implications for MMA. That's the big debate right now. How long should someone get suspended for and for how long afterwards should they be considered enhanced? They're giving people some pretty significant suspensions now for steroids, like two years. But there's this John Jones case that I'm sure you're aware of. Do you wear this? Yeah. He's testing positive for the metabolite, for a long-term metabolite for a very small dose. He's never tested positive for short-term metabolite. For testosterone? No, it's not testosterone. What is the stuff? Taranibol? Yeah. And essentially, it's a tainted supplement. It doesn't have any performance-enhancing benefit in terms of the amount of the dosage that he's tested positive for. But it's lingering in his system because the protocols for, well, their ability rather, to detect these metabolites has increased rapidly. And over the last year, it's just unbelievably more sensitive to the point where they're detecting these infinitesimally small levels of these metabolites. And there also seems to be some sort of a pulsing effect where your body releases these infinitesimally small metabolites and then doesn't. So you'll test negative. And then next week, you'll test positive. But only for the long-term metabolite, which is an indication that there's no re-administration of the performance-enhancing drug. So it's real. And everybody's mad. There's so many athletes that are mad about it. And from what you're saying, and from this study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick highlighted, it's especially for someone who's willingly taken something. It's one of those, like, once a doper, always a doper type of things. There is that. See, the John Jones situation is very tricky because he's so good and he's so dominant that people just assume that he's been doing something his whole career. And when you catch him, they're like, aha, that's the reason why he's so good. And it may be, but it also might be, he's got phenomenal genetics. He has two brothers and two two brothers. He was just the best of the guys who were taking drugs. That's a different situation because that's a sport where, at least in the time period where he was competing, everyone was doing something, 100%. They had to go back to 18th place. And you don't think the UFC is like that? It's not right there. It's not. It's not. It can't be. They're too strict. The USADA is knocking on doors at 6 o'clock in the morning, peeing this cup. And you do hear about positive tests, but the amount of positive tests versus the negative tests is overwhelming. Way more guys are not doing something. It used to be the opposite. It used to be in the 90s. Everyone was doing something. We were just talking about this on the Fight Companion podcast that a big issue is grappling. Same competitions are overrun with steroid users because no one's testing. The smell test is off the fucking charts. You're looking at these guys. They're just ridiculous. Just jacked. Low body fat, super high muscle mass. And they're training jiu-jitsu all the time too. So you would think it would be very hard for them to maintain muscle mass as well as be able to train the way they're training with technique and drills and cardio and all those different things. It's very difficult to maintain muscle. Any concurrent strength endurance training scenario. Very difficult. Very difficult. So there's a real issue with some of these guys competing this way and then trying to transition into MMA.