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Midnight Mania! MMA manager claims USADA is failing, says he knows ‘at least five people’ on EPO

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Whenever an athlete fails for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), one of the first questions is always, who knew? Did their coach know? What about their teammates? Their strength and conditioning coach? What about their manager?

Controversial mixed martial arts (MMA) manager Ali Abdelaziz — who manages such fighters as Kamaru Usman, Cody Garbrandt, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Frankie Edgar, among others — is getting ahead of these questions. He says he knows at least five people who are on EPO. Are they his clients, one wonders?

TJ going through what he’s going through. He’s already dealing with a lot of problems. But @Cody_Nolove those 2 losses should be no contests. Usada doing a horrible job testing guys for EPO, I know at least 5 ppl who are on it

He is referring, of course, to T.J. Dillashaw’s positive test for EPO, and the revelation in the aftermath that United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) doesn’t test for EPO as part of its standard routine — it requires a special test that it does not always run. USADA retested a sample from before the Henry Cejudo fight that also came back positive for the substance. This raised the question, if a retroactive test came back positive for the period prior to, say, a fight with Cody Garbrandt, should that result be overturned? We know how Garbrandt’s manager would vote.

While we are talking about the figures surrounding fighters who might have knowledge of their EPO habits, this statement from Dillashaw’s strength and conditioning coach is remarkable. It must be read to be believed.

Suffice it to say that when you start out a sentence, “As a man of few words,” and the rest of that sentence is, “preferring passion and belief as a shield to be carried out upon, I am bemused to careless and reckless dialog for no other purpose than to make myself heard among the masses plagued by willful ignorance,” you already lost credibility.


Insomnia

Dillashaw certainly has people talking, including Georges St-Pierre’s coach Firas Zahabi.

Artem Lobov fails to see how Dillashaw is suffering.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Yoel Romero vs. Paulo Costa seems like it might turn out to be one of those cursed match ups that are too good for this plane ...

I honestly can’t tell if this picture of Ben Askren’s hair is real or not:

Max Holloway is the man!

Good to know who tops McGregor’s No. 1 enemy list.

There is a good chance that Dustin Poirier vs. Max Holloway is fought at the most furious pace in UFC history.

Ben Askren suggests a new way for Cris Cyborg to smash watermelons.

TMZ got the wrong guy from the Van Heusen commercial. Not Stephen Thompson!

“When the kicks came with punches” is an excellent short story title:

This is amazing!


Random Land

It is a day for stylized language applied to very ordinary scenarios:

It’s nearly summer again!

Sleep well, Maniacs! A better tomorrow is always possible. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook @Vorpality

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