jmdirt said:
The ladies division is wild! I like that any one of them could win on any given night! So does AN get RR or HH now? AN looked WAY bigger than MT.
Last I heard him remark to it, Dana said R3 will get whomever wears the belt on her return. I haven't looked into Nunes's "street weight" but the Brazilians across the board are notorious for their weight-cutting.
The Ferttitas bought the UFC about UFC 40, but even with all their financial backing (read: dad's money), it stayed underwater until UFC 100 (hindered, no doubt, by widespread misunderstanding of the sport, which Zuffa have made great headway in correcting). If
MMA Payout's estimate of 1-1.2m is accurate (actual numbers won't be available for weeks yet), UFC 200 will be no threat to eclipse UFC 100 as the high water mark for PPV sales (@1.6m). Which will leave speculation what might have been if Jones-Cormier II had come off, but Jones-Cormier I only sold 800,000 PPVs.
Both Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen are saying Jon Jones tested positive for two estrogen-blockers. This is a possible indicator he was on post-cycle therapy, coming off a "cycle" of anabolic steroids. Natural Test production is depressed when on cycle, so symptoms of excessive estrogen, like gynecomastia (AKA ***'s tits), can appear immediately post-cycle, when the exogenous Test is withdrawn but before the testes have regained normal output.
On PCT, an anti-estrogen (SERM) typically is accompanied by hCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin), which mimics the natural luteinizing hormone to trigger the testes into resuming natural production all the sooner (a function of
the HPG axis). When Jones said he was accused of taking something he couldn't even pronounce, hCG was the first banned substance I thought of.
AASs also would explain why his T/E ratio was as low as 0.19:1 during testing prior to Jones-Cormier I (UFC 182). The OOC might have been administered early enough into his PCT that endogenous Test production was still depressed but long enough into his course of diuretics that no exogenous Test remained. NSAC did a CIR test on account of the abnormal T/E, but it came back cleans.
In a recent Joe Rogan Experience podcast,
Chael Sonnen tells the tale (which he alleges he heard from eye-witnesses) that USADA showed up unexpectedly at Jones's gym in the run-up to Jones-Johnson at UFC 187 (23 May, 2015), which never came off, on account of Jones's hit-and-run incident. The story alleges that Jones panicked at the approach of the USADA men and hid under the cage, thinking they'd leave once convinced he was not there. This was prior to the UFC signing with USADA, before fighters were obliged to keep the organisation apprised of their location, so there would have been no penalty for Jones being unlocatable. But instead of leaving, the USADA men took a seat and waited until the gym closed for the day and everyone (except Jones, hiding under the ring) went home for the night.
All of which only got Jones off the hook temporarily, because USADA got wind of how they had been duped, and moved Jones's name to the top of their hit list. Sonnen says they were so vexed, in fact, they figured Jones must have had to go to answer the call of nature at some point while he was in hiding, so they even tried (unsuccessfully?) to get a warrant to test the floor under the cage for Jones's urine.
Sonnen also speculates that this one positive was so far in advance of the match, and the OOCs were coming with such regularity, that there likely are other (possible) positives that USADA just haven't finished testing yet.
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