Joe Rogan | Why Was Frank Mir Punished Worse Than Jon Jones?

So let's get back to the Frank Mir case. Frank Mir tested positive. Was it also oral tyrannical? Also, same thing, long-term metabolite of oral tyrannical. Here's the difference. Frank Mir, the same as John Jones, his first time through, was sanctioned. John didn't get off the first time this showed up in his system. He was looking at potential four years, went to arbitration, presented evidence, enacted some other clauses in the policy that reduced his sanction. What does that mean? Well, one of them was substantial assistance, where he assisted USADA in some way, shape, or form, and he got a reduction for doing that. Assisted in what way? So, I don't know. And this is the exact reason why I do this. So I insulate myself from that interaction between USADA and the athlete. They are the sole adjudicator in this. They do not get me on the phone and say, hey, we're thinking about going this way. They adjudicate completely in a vacuum. And you're, just so people know, your title is Safety, Health and Safety? Athlete Health and Performance, Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance. Okay. So you no longer work for USADA? I've never worked for USADA. That's a big misconception. A lot of our fighters think that. I've never worked for USADA. I was a federal agent for 22 and a half years. The latter part of my career got involved with all these PED distribution cases. 2015, Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White, through a mutual friend, contacted me and said, hey, would you come out and kind of talk to us? We're contemplating maybe putting our own program together. We've had some recent high profile positives. So I came out to Vegas, talked with them, and a week later I get a phone call asking if I want to come work for them and kind of implement this new program. But I've never been an employee of USADA. Okay. So that's good to know because that's been stated by some public figures that you used to work for USADA and now you work for the UFC. Never worked for USADA. And that you're a shill. That's one of my favorite words. So you never worked for USADA. You brought USADA to the UFC or communicated with USADA and facilitated this agreement? Correct. So I never worked for USADA. I did work very closely with USADA. So USADA, when I first started these series of investigations back in 2002, look, I knew all about how to work a heroin distribution organization, a cocaine distribution organization, methamphetamine. But when it came to performance enhancing drugs, there was no class that myself or really any other federal agent or law enforcement agent goes through surrounding distribution and performance enhancing drugs. So I was examining the discarded garbage of Bauco every week when they put it out to the curb, began seeing notes, wrappers, all these substances. I had no idea what these things were. I didn't know the difference between testosterone, epitestosterone, erythropoietin, HCH. I knew nothing. So what I did is I figured out who those experts were, who were the people that could very quickly get me up to speed on what I was looking at. Dr. Catlin, who ran the USADA Olympic Lab, was one of the first and he started kind of walking me through this. He put me in touch with USADA and they began educating me as well. So over the course of those investigations, I got a lot from them in terms of educating on these substances. They were bringing some of their cooperating witnesses to me and then we go off and running on criminal investigations, but never worked for them. So USADA, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way they would work would be very compartmentalized. They would not specifically communicate with you on all of the details of this. Correct. And they don't now. I mean, that's the independence aspect. I don't, as these deliberations are going on, what they're looking at, I don't know. Cooperation, just for me, to be frank, in my eyes would mean that something was done purposely, illegally, and this person had some knowledge of purposeful, illegal activity and that they would somehow communicate this to facilitate some sort of catching of someone involved in a criminal act or in the act of cheating. Yeah, that would make sense to me too. So that would be what we're talking about. USADA would allow John a shorter suspension if he actively participated in helping them catch people that were cheating. That's the understanding. That would be implied. I don't know to what level that was done. I don't know if it was that or if it was, hey, here's how this drug works in more general. Here's how I don't know what it was. I purposely- But that would mean that John would have to know about cheating. If you're saying like, this is how this drug works, this is how I used it. I mean, this would, he would, that would mean his initial defense would have to be thrown out the window because it wasn't an accident. Well, I mean, I don't know about that. If you knew something separate from, you know, that he wasn't doing, but someone else. And again, I don't want anybody to reach that conclusion. I have no idea what his substantial assistance entailed none. Right. And that's a slippery slope. It is a slippery slope. And look, transparency is important in any program, but, you know, only to a certain level. Look, if you were transparent about what everyone's, you know, cooperation or substantial assistance was and the whole world knew about it, you're never going to get anybody after that coming in and cooperating. I saw this definitely on the criminal side with, you know, informants. You don't, that's not something that's, that you want to be transparent about or disclose. Right. But there's going to be a bunch of people that have a real issue with that. The idea that John Jones, you know, one of the greatest fighters of all time is actually working as an informant. I mean, it's, it's listed in the, in the, you know, in McLaren's ruling that that was one of the reasons for the mitigating factor in the reduction. But I don't, again, Joe, I'm telling you, I have nothing about it. It's been stated, we know what it is. Okay. Or we know that it's a thing. When it comes to the John's initial test where he was sanctioned and was suspended for a determined period of time, Frank Meir also was sanctioned. He was. For a determined period of time as well. He was two years. John was shorter than that. John was shorter. John cooperated and a bunch of other deals. Two things. He, he not only cooperated, he went to arbitration and put on a defense. He put on a defense that look, the evidence here shows no intentional ingestion of it. And in fact, McLaren gave him a further reduction based on there was no evidence that this was intentionally done. Frank Meir didn't put on any, he had every right to go to arbitration, put on his own offense, didn't do that. What about Josh Barnett? Josh Barnett, you know, a completely different set of facts. His came from a contaminated supplement. It was a different substance. He went to an arbitration hearing. The arbitrator ruled with Josh and said, yep, you know, based on where we are now, based on the care and effort that you took, you're right. You deserve to, didn't to have time served at the time of that arbitration. So again, I think that's a good example of the checks and balances in place here. You've got me overseeing the program, taking a look at how these things come out. You've got the ability from the athlete to go to McLaren's group and judge, you know, the set of facts. And in that case, McLaren's group said, you saw that I think maybe overreached a little bit here. And I believe Josh and Josh is, you know, basically time served. So, you know, you want to see, you want to see them get it perfect, right every time. But you know, and the reality in the real world is that doesn't necessarily happen. And that's why you have these checks and balances available. Josh Barnett's take on the matter is that they tried to paint him as guilty, even though he was not, and that he feels like he definitely got a bad deal and that he was labeled as someone who was taking this substance. He was suspended for a long period of time while he was going through this. And although he was found not guilty, that he feels like not enough emphasis was put into establishing that he was not guilty and that, you know, he feels like they chased him down over something that he didn't do. Yeah, I mean, well, here's what he did do is he used a supplement that if he would have listened to anything that we educate on that USADA sends out regular reminders, our fighters are required on a quarterly basis to go through videos and their whereabouts filing that deals with these issues. If he would have followed any of that advice when it came to his supplement choices, he would have never chosen the supplement he used. I, you know, when I heard about that supplement and what was on the label and how it was marketed, I said, okay, well, that's likely the candidate of where it came from. So, I mean, the analysis would be, hey, you know, that pool, be careful, there's sharks swimming in that pool, they can eat you. And the person jumps in the water anyway saying, like, I didn't want to get eaten by a shark, but a shark comes up and ate them. It's like, hey, we told you that this was the case, you didn't follow that. Now, there also needs to be a differentiation between someone who's intentional cheating, intentionally cheating, and someone that's just, you know, makes a naive supplement choice. There needs to be a differentiation between that and there was in that case. Josh didn't get, you know, the full penalty of what was, what that substance, you know, would have rendered. But he did have to go through a long period of time where he was unable to fight. He did. But, you know, again, he had the prohibited substance in his body. USADA has to look at, hey, even though you didn't do that on purpose, did that give you a performance enhancing benefit? Did it allow you to recover a little bit better? Did it make you a little bit stronger? And, you know, that's why those strict liability provisions are in there. Otherwise people would just take these prohibited supplements and say, oh, I didn't know. Exactly. It was an accident. And meanwhile, they're getting a benefit from it. Exactly. So they have to have some sort of penalty in place. I think so. Now, I also think, again, there needs to be a differentiation between the intentional and non-intentional. And we do have that in our policy. There are definitely mitigating factors available in our policy that if you didn't do things on purpose, you're not, you know, you're not sanction aside. Tim Means is a great example there. So Tim Means used a relatively benign supplement. It was a creatine. Creatine, you know, generally doesn't have an issue as opposed to like testosterone booster supplements. We tell our athletes, stay away from anything marketing as a testosterone booster. It's one of the most common with contaminants or purposely spiking, purposeful spikings. Tim Means uses a creatine. It had a ostrine in it, a very small amount. We found it in there. You know, ostrine is a two year sanction. He got six months, you know, so back relatively quickly. So I think that's- Was the same thing with Yoel Romero? So correct. Yoel Romero used a natural diuretic product that had a SARM in it. In all these cases, not only does the prohibited substance need to show up in what the athlete has says they've used already, but to protect against making sure the athlete isn't purposely spiking it. Usada will go out on their own, on the market, independently procure hopefully the same lot of product. And in the case of Yoel and Tim, they were able to do that, test it completely independently of the athlete, determine what level the prohibited substance is in that. Based on the interview with the athlete of how much did you use, when's the last time you used it relative to this test, do the science calculations just to make sure an athlete's not saying, well, I know this creatine is spiked with ostrine, so I'm going to go use ostrine. And then I have a built in excuse when I test positive for ostrine. In order to be able to match contaminant levels with what's being excreted in the urine, you would literally have to have PhD chemistry degree and I'm not aware of any of our athletes having that. It'd be very, very difficult to do that. And so these detection levels, again, we're talking about nanograms. We're not talking about large quantities that would... Or picograms. Picograms, okay. Correct.