Last night, news broke that former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir had been slapped with a two-year ban from the United States Anti-Doping Agency. His suspension stems from an in-competition test, conducted after his knockout loss to Mark Hunt. Mir tested positive for metabolites of the banned substance dehydrochloromethyltestosterone.
USADA broke down their investigation of Mir’s failed test, and his resulting ban, in the following statement:
“DHCMT is a non-Specified Substance in the class of Anabolic Agents and prohibited at all times under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, which has adopted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List. The finding of a long-term DHCMT metabolite in Mir’s sample, which was identified through a new detection method by the WADA-accredited laboratory in Tokyo, Japan, led to Mir being provisionally suspended from competition on April 8, 2016.
“Upon learning of the positive results of the sample analyzed in Tokyo, USADA had all previously collected stored samples for Mir reanalyzed at the WADA-accredited laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah (SMRTL), which had also recently implemented methodology for the detection of newly identified long-term DHCMT metabolites. As a result of the additional analyses, SMRTL discovered that an out-of-competition sample Mir provided on February 5, 2016, which had previously been reported to USADA as negative for the presence of prohibited substances, was also positive for the same long-term DHCMT metabolite found in Mir’s in-competition sample.”
Now, Mir has issued his own statement on this hefty ban. The heavyweight veteran maintains that he did not knowingly take a banned substance. He made his case in a post to Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialFrankMir/posts/741025489399975
“I have consistently denied knowingly taking anything that would violate USADA’s guidelines,” Mir said in his statement. “I was originally told that my post fight sample from March 20, 2016, had been flagged for a trace metabolite, following my clean test the previous month on February 5. For this past year, I have been focused on analyzing anything I could within that six week window that could’ve possibly been the cause…testing supplements and reviewing dietary habits. It is frustrating to now be told that USADA has changed their mind about the February 5 test, claiming that the sample they once cleared is now clouded with the same trace metabolite. Even more frustrating is that I’ve been told that the long term metabolite could date back two years, prior to the implementation of USADA standards and possibly to a time when I had a legal exemption for testosterone replacement therapy. As hard as it was to try to retrospectively analyze everything I had consumed within a fairly recent six week period of my life, I would have no idea where to start going back years into my past. What I can do is reiterate my denial and ask you to note that my position on this issue has remained consistent. By contrast, USADA now has two versions of their narrative concerning me. I will discuss this latest development at length on Monday’s edition of my Phone Booth Fighting podcast. I invite you to listen as I will have much more to say on this issue. The outpouring of support that I continue to receive from my fans has been overwhelming, and I am eternally grateful to each of you for that.”
Do you think Frank Mir’s two-year ban is just, or is it perhaps a little excessive? Make your voice heard in the comments.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/22/2017.