Donald Cerrone may have become the first fighter to notch strike one on USADA’s “whereabouts” protocols, revealing in an interview with the Pirate Life Podcast that a recent spur of the moment trip to Las Vegas had him run afoul of their program.
Cerrone says he made the decision to go to Las Vegas last minute, and that’s when USADA collectors showed up to his house looking for him.
“In the new testing, you have to tell them [UFC/USADA] your whereabouts. F***, I don’t know where I’m going to be,” Cerrone said (transcribed by BloodyElbow.com). “They show up to my house and are like ‘where are you this weekend?’ It was on the weekend that I went to Vegas on a whim.
“They were like ‘where are you?’ and I was like ‘I’m in Vegas’. And they were like ‘we’re at your house.’ And I was like ‘well that sucks.'”
“So I failed. I failed my drug test.”
There is no punishment for a single whereabouts failure, though Cerrone could face discipline should it happen just two more times. He remains set for a Lightweight Title bout against Rafael dos Anjos this December.
Penick’s Analysis: I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that of all fighters on the roster, it’s Cerrone who winds up having an issue first. Now, if there’s an easy way to update where you’re going to be under this system, then it’s on Cerrone for not letting them know he was heading well away from home. If the system requires tons of paperwork and isn’t easy to just update where you’re going to be if you decide to go out of town for a weekend, that’s on USADA and a broken system. This has been thrust upon the fighters on the UFC’s roster without prior knowledge or consent, and there are going to be significant growing pains. With that said, Cerrone’s going to have to do get better at trying to inform them at least when he makes an on the whim decision to go away from where he’d usually be.
[Photo (c) Jayne Kamin-Oncea via USA Today Sports]
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