Vitor Belfort

If you haven’t read Deadspin’s report on the “sketchy” Vitor Belfort drug test that the UFC reportedly accidentally emailed to a group of fighters, managers and trainers back in 2012, the first thing you should do is go read that right now.

All done? Good. A few things about that, as we try to wrap our minds around what Josh Gross’ report tells us about the past, present and future of the UFC (which, by the way, declined to comment on the story when contacted by MMAjunkie):

1. Belfort’s lab report, as well as the UFC’s frantic/threatening response after mistakenly emailing it out to a bunch of people who shouldn’t have had it, is basically a smoking gun.

It proves that the UFC was in possession of hard evidence suggesting that Belfort – who had already been nabbed for steroid use once – might be abusing synthetic testosterone. It knew, and it took no action against him, and no action to remove him from his upcoming fight.

That right there is damning information. It confirms all the fears we had about the UFC acting as its own regulator, issuing its own TUEs, and conducting its own drug testing. Here is a documented instance where, faced with information inconvenient to its own goals as a promoter, the UFC failed a very important test.

2. On the other hand, things are different in the UFC now than they were in 2012.

The UFC no longer handles its own drug testing. It has since handed over the reins to USADA, ostensibly to avoid exactly this sort of conflict of interest. That’s a good thing, since this Belfort incident proves that the UFC wasn’t capable of handling it responsibly. Is USADA? Thomas Hauser’s recent report cast some doubt on that, but at least we seem to be moving in the right direction.

Clearly, the UFC can’t be trusted to handle this stuff on its own. Even UFC executives seem to have realized that, though they apparently had to travel a rocky road just to get there.

3. The fact that the UFC is the one taking the major hit here already tells you everything you need to know about the current state of Belfort’s reputation.

Chris Weidman and Vitor Belfort

Is it surprising to know he was walking around in 2012 with elevated testosterone? Nope. Is it out of the question that, as Chris Weidman suspected before their title fight this year, he was still up to no good? Not at all.

Belfort’s come up with suspicious or downright damning results in so many different drug tests throughout his career, at this point a completely clean one would almost be more newsworthy.

4. The person who should be most upset about this? Jon Jones.

Almost immediately after UFC President Dana White publicly lambasted him for “murdering” UFC 151 by refusing to sign off on a last-minute opponent switch, the UFC knowingly put him in the cage with a fighter it knew had been walking around with elevated testosterone levels less than a month before the fight.

It didn’t tell Jones what he was walking into (though Belfort’s physique should have been a clue), didn’t give him any indication that he was about to fight an artificially enhanced opponent. Then Jones nearly got his arm snapped in half, which is the kind of thing that might foster some lingering resentment, now that he knows what many of us long suspected about the Belfort who showed up that night.

5. Let us reflect, for just a moment, on how utterly insane MMA’s TRT era was.

Remember all those tired arguments we used to hear in favor of it? How it was a “100 percent legal” way, in Dana White’s words, for fighters with natural deficiencies to get within a “normal” range? How it wasn’t cheating, because they were strictly monitored to ensure that they didn’t abuse it?

It was an obviously flawed argument from the beginning, and many of us said so. This report proves not just why it should have never been allowed, but also that UFC executives knew of at least one fighter out there who gave the lie to the claim that TRT was only being used to normalize hormone levels.

It was a dangerous loophole, an end-run around the rules, and when UFC executives had paper in hand to show that Belfort was abusing it, they did nothing. They put him in a title fight, in fact. That could have ended much worse than it did. And, if not for one UFC employee’s email screw-up and one reporter’s dogged pursuit of it, we might never have known about it.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.