Over the course of his five-year UFC career, featherweight contender Chad Mendes has lobbed steroid accusations at not only former featherweight champion Jose Aldo — I believe his statement was something to the effect of “I think Aldo is definitely using PEDs” — but the majority of his UFC counterparts in general. “I’d probably say at least 80 percent of fighters are probably taking something,” Mendes told Sherdog’s “Beatdown” radio show back in 2014.
“You know, there’s guys that are coming back from injury trying to take it. Whether it’s them trying to survive, pay their mortgage, pay rent or whatever — or guys just trying to get that full advantage to be at the top. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of people taking performance enhancing drugs.”
So I suppose it’s somewhat ironic that, while absolutely zero of Mendes’ former UFC opponents have been busted for a performance enhancing drug of any kind (yet), none other than Mendes himself was flagged for a potential USADA violation following an out-of-competition test back in June. Even more surprising? He immediately copped to it, tweeting that “I didn’t do my homework and that was a big mistake. I own it and I’m going to pay for it.”
And pay for it he will. Earlier today, USADA officials announced that Mendes had received a two-year suspension for said failure (retroactively dated to last month), which was revealed to be the result of a growth hormone known as GHRP-6. BloodyElbow’s Iain Kidd has provided some follow-up information on what exactly GHRP-6 is:
GHRP-6 stands for Growth Hormone Releasing Hexapeptide, and is one of a class of drugs known as growth hormone releasing peptides. Something to note is that while it has growth hormone in the name, GHRP-6 is not the same as human growth hormone (hGH).
GHRP-6 is a substance which is designed to increase your body’s natural production of growth hormone. Much like clomiphene is useful for increasing the body’s production of testosterone, GHRP-6 does the same thing for growth hormone, though in a different way. GHRP-6 can be used as needed without requiring any “cycling” or post-cycle therapy. GHRP-6 acts as a mimetic of ghrelin, which is sometimes called the “hunger hormone.” Ghrelin is used as a signal to increase appetite.
Basically, it appears that Conor McGregor’s claims about being able to “rest his balls” on Mendes’ forehead were taken to heart by the former title challenger, and his response was to start Hulking up on the juice in order to enact his ultimate revenge. Or he simply didn’t read a label while trying to recover from the back-to-back KO losses he suffered to McGregor and Frankie Edgar at UFC 189 and the TUF 22 Finale, respectively. In any case, at least this suspension will provide him with some time to adequately recover and/or refocus his efforts on becoming a professional outdoorsman.
