Joe Rogan - USADA Changed Rule Because of Nate Diaz?

Uh, let's take a look at, you know, we took, we think was a pretty good shot at the rules to begin with But, look and see how those rules played themselves out as time went on After about a year and a half, there were a couple instances where I saw, hey, this isn't quite fair to an athlete. We need to change. Ybackground So, after a year and a half, there was a couple rules that we changed The first one, that's kind of a funny story behind this too Was and if you remember when Nate fought Connor, I think the second time He goes to the press conference after and takes out a vape pen. Do you remember that? And someone asked him what he was doing and he said he was CBD. And at the time, the rule was the in-competition period where CBD was prohibited lasted until four hours after the conclusion of the fight and he was clearly within that time period. So you saw it, contacted me and said, hey, you know, technically Nate was in violation of this and I said, hey, look, this was not the intent of the rule. This is, you know, and they never indicated that they were going to sanction him, but I made it clear. Let's explain CBD for anybody that might not know what we're talking about. Sure. So CBD is part of the, you know, the marijuana plant, but it's not psychoactive part of it. I know a lot of our fighters anecdotally use it for anti-inflammatory purposes. I think, I mean, have you ever used it? Yes. And one of the other benefits is? Anxiety. It's great for people that are under stress. It actually has a great response for that. I know a lot of people that use it just for anxiety, but anti-inflammation is a big one. That's the big one people use it for. People with arthritis love it. Yeah. Again, comparing to, you know, natural plant derived product versus a synthetic, you know, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, Advils, Tylenols can be toxic on you. Really common sense would, you know, in addition to science would say that CBD is maybe a little bit healthier for you. Nevertheless it was prohibited in competition. Is it still? No. So that was actually a rule change. The WADA prohibited list, which we followed, took it completely off the prohibited list starting in 2018. That's amazing. So that's great. So all these athletes could just take CBD the entire time of their training. There's no, it's obviously there's no performance benefit. There's no psychoactive effect. It just reduces inflammation. Correct. And it does it in a natural way. And it was the case before they could do it in training. It was only prohibited in competition. So weigh in day and fight day. Now it's completely been taken off the list and it's okay to use it anytime. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So it was good. So, but we identified a problem with the rules in that when Nate finished that fight with Connor, you saw it came to the post-fight medical tent. He said, Nate, we need to make a collection from you. And I don't know whether it was blood or urine, but they got a sample from him. He then went to the press conference after and was on, you know, took the CBD. What I said is, look, you can't punish him. You have the sample that shows what was in his system. Yes, CBD was prohibited in competition, but you have a sample to show whether or not he was using it. Right. It's clear that, you know, he was using it after the fight. We just put those extra four hours in there. Why? With the thought of if a fighter finishes a fight and somehow you saw it is not able to get to him, say gets in the ambulance right away, goes to the hospital, you increase that window just in case they can't get them. Come to find out as we started putting this program together, you saw it can always get to that fighter after. If they're transported, they can hop in the ambulance with them. It wasn't an issue where we needed those extra four months. So we changed that rule. And now basically the rule is the in-competition period ends with a collection immediately after the fight or, you know, you saw it has a reasonable amount of time after the fight. So the funny thing is after we changed this rule, Nate and Nick Diaz come to a fight. They're sitting, call it the Zufa section, you know, kind of Danish section right there behind Dana's table. So I go over to Nick and Nate. I say, hey, Nate, man, hey, we changed that rule, you know, the whole CBD thing. And actually we kind of refer to it as the Nate Diaz rule. And when the Diaz brothers read a fight, I mean, it's pandemonium and chaos. Everybody's yelling their name. And I literally, I'm like, I had the demon register with them. He didn't look at me. He was looking somewhere else. So about a month later, Nate, I see him. I think he was in Vegas. I'm in the kind of walkout tunnel. And here comes Nate. So he sees me, comes over me, gives me kind of the bro hug, what's up? He's with Yancey Medeiros. And so Yancey and I start talking and Yancey beyond being just an unbelievably entertaining fighter is one of the best dudes on the roster. Great guy. So I'm talking to Yancey. All of a sudden Nate goes, hey, Jeff, man, tell Yancey about my USADA rule. I got a SADA rule named after me, dog. And so I thought, man, you're doing something right when Nate Diaz is like excited about a change in the USADA rule, right? Yeah, that is a very good rule. I'm really excited about that. What's the story with Nick? He can't fight? Does he still have like some sort of a fine he has to pay? Well, Nick was our first fighter that ran into the whereabouts issue. So he got three whereabouts failures in a rolling 12 months. So he's currently going through that process. It's a tough one because I don't want to fight. I think he does. I think he does. I mean, we've sat down with him over the last couple of months and talking about trying to resolve this whereabouts issue. I mean, the unfortunate thing there is look, the whereabouts failure sanctions are meant to catch people that are cheating and trying to avoid testing. And I just think Nick's lifestyle led to those three kind of whereabouts. Not that he was trying to avoid testing. Just Nick being Nick. Yeah, we're trying to work through that. He trusted certain individuals to do his whereabouts for him. I think is what happened over time and those individuals would come in and out of his life. And it's kind of unbeknownst to him that he was missing a lot of these things. Nevertheless, again, there's strict liability here and it's currently under sanction, but we're hoping to resolve that pretty quick.