Opinion: U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s Up-Hill Climb

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.* * * We thought we had reached our breaking point with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency with their handling of Lyoto Machida’s case and subsequent lack of transparency with the media. We were wrong.On Tuesday evening, Invicta Fighting Championships strawweight Champion Angela Hill revealed in an emotional Twitter video that her scheduled Ultimate Fighting Championship return had been delayed. She had stepped in to replace Maryna Moroz against surging contender Jessica Andrade at UFC 207 on Dec. 30, but the fight well through when USADA told her that she would need to undergo a mandatory four months of enhanced testing before returning. The four month rule was stated to be in place for a very specific reason: So fighters don’t “retire” to take banned performance enhancing drugs with the idea that they will return while maintaining some of the gains they achieved while out of the testing pool. That doesn’t apply to Hill. Yes, she’s a former UFC fighter who’s returning, but she didn’t retire or even go on any kind of self-imposed sabbatical. She was cut after losing two fights in a row, albeit to the highly ranked Tecia Torres and Rose Namajunas. Sure, for her growth as a fighter, getting fired was probably the best thing that could happen to her, as Invicta had a less steep curve from unranked fighters to the top 15, but that doesn’t really matter. Hill was cut. She didn’t ask for her release. She didn’t retire. She didn’t even go into the black hole that contains seemingly missing UFC roster fighters like Tina Lahdemaki (now Tina Hanninen) and Buddy Roberts, who never retired but have been gone for almost two and a half years and four years, four months, respectively. She was cut! Technically speaking, the rule, as worded, does apply to any fighter who “gives notice of retirement to UFC, or has otherwise ceased to have a contractual relationship with UFC.” Where it gets tricky is that, infamously, “UFC may grant an exemption to the four-month written notice rule in exceptional …

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