Cris Cyborg’s Run-In With USADA In Thailand Wasn’t A Good Look

UFC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg has found herself embroiled in yet another semi-scandal involving drug testing. Over the past weekend, USADA agents from Singapore were sent to Thailand where Cyborg is training to collect a sample. But things did not go smoothly. Instead, the police were called and the implication made that Cyborg tried to duck or delay testing, or her camp tried to have the collected sample seized by the police.

This isn’t the first time police have been called on drug testers — a similar situation occurred with Jose Aldo leading up to his canceled fight with Conor McGregor at UFC 189. With the half-life of high-end steroids getting shorter and shorter to minimize the risk of detection in the random testing era, having a few hours notice can be enough time for a fighter to flush their system. So any testing situation gone awry is enough to set off speculation that a fighter is trying to cheat.

Cyborg has been dogged by accusations of steroid use through her entire career. That’s just the kind of thing you’re going to have to deal with when you’re one of the most (if not the most) muscular women in MMA. It doesn’t help that she was stripped of her Strikeforce belt after testing positive for stanozolol in 2011, something she blames on a tainted diuretic given to her by a teammate.

Things started to look better for her after the UFC signed her and entered her into the USADA drug testing pool in 2015. Since then she’s been tested 20 times, but there are those who still feel like she’s hiding something. Adding fuel to that fire was a positive test for spironolactone in 2016. Spironolactone isn’t a steroid, but is still on USADA’s list of banned substances and is used in female bodybuilding circles for countering the masculinizing effects of steroids.

But Cyborg put forward a convincing case to USADA that the spironolactone was part of an endocrine disorder treatment from her physician to recover from a year of cutting down to 140 pounds for UFC catchweight bouts. After a month-long investigation, USADA cleared Cyborg completely. But the taint that goes along with an accusation like this stuck around. Find a popular article about Cyborg on the internet, and you’ll find people bringing up the USADA failure as proof that she’s juicing.
https://twitter.com/criscyborg/status/911774235583905793

And now there’s this incident in Thailand, which once again sounds sketchy on its face but may be less sinister upon closer inspection. According to the owner of Phuket Top Team where Cris is training, it was hotel staff that contacted the police after noticing the two USADA testing agents arrive at 6 AM to bang on Cyborg’s door. Cyborg gave her sample before the police arrived without complaint, and was not involved in the police investigation past answering their questions.

But that’s according to Phuket Top Team. When it comes to things like this that happen on the other side of the world, we’re stuck relying on third parties that may have the motivation to shade the truth in their friends’ favor. Was it a simple misunderstanding or an attempt to disrupt the USADA collection process? For us average fans on the internet, there’s no way to tell.

As Jon Jones has learned, you can only receive the benefit of the doubt so many times. This is the second incident since Cyborg entered the testing pool in 2015 that has made people go hmm. For some, she’s already guilty of PED use based on appearance alone. Another incident or two like this, and that group could grow into the majority.