UFC 141: On Alistair Overeem's Alleged Steroid Use

by Dr. Octagon, J.D.

A big stink has been made recently over Alistair Overeem’s alleged use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. He missed a test recently, but apparently it was because he had already booked a flight back to the Netherlands to care for his ailing mother. Seems like a pretty legit excuse since he had a plane ticket and an ailing mother to back it up. He has since passed two drug tests and will continue to be tested after the fight.

I am a firm believer the UFC and state athletic commissions need to step up their game when it comes to testing. Chael Sonnen, for example, received only a $2,500 fine and a year’s suspension for having roughly 17 times the testosterone of an average man. In a sport where some fight just twice a year, that really isn’t a much of a punishment. I would be willing to wager the extra muscle mass he put on while cheating didn’t go away over the course of that year. Sonnen looks as big as ever. 

In a sport where large men with small gloves punch each other in the head, the use of PEDs creates a particularly deadly advantage. It isn’t baseball, where the only danger is ruining the integrity of the sport’s sacred recordbook.

That said, I haven’t wasted a thought worrying about who used steroids in the UFC 141 main event. You have Brock Lesnar, who was suspiciously large while fighting in the WWF against Overeem, who gained a suspicious amount of mass while fighting in countries without testing. This is like Roger Clemens pitching to Marc McGwire.

So it’s the first Reem fight where steroids really shouldn’t be an issue. But the added publicity from Overeem’s first UFC fight against one of the sport’s biggest draws (WWF fans are used to buying Pay Per View for fake fighting) means it’s all anyone can talk about.

Reem is in the UFC now and will be tested more than anyone else after the flight to the Netherlands incident. So it’s safe to assume that regardless of what happened in the past, going forward he is going to be as clean as anyone else in the UFC. Whether that’s good enough for critics remains in doubt, but beating Lesnar would render the question moot as far as the fans are concerned.