Sherdog’s Top 10: PED Busts

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5. Royce Gracie (Dynamite!! USA)
K-1 Hero’s “Dynamite!! USA”
The entirety of the “Dynamite!! USA” event promoted by Fighting and Entertainment Group and EliteXC was a fiasco from start to finish. FEG had trouble obtaining a promoter’s license, while the athletic commission nixed both scheduled headliner Hong Man Choi and future Strikeforce and UFC competitor Antonio Silva. Despite those substantial screw-ups, the card still featured former professional wrestler Brock Lesnar in his MMA debut, along with a long-awaited rematch between Kazushi Sakuraba and the legendary Gracie, who had first met in an unforgettable, 90-minute battle in the epic 2000 Pride open weight grand prix.

A noticeably more sculpted Gracie, who had been defeated by welterweight champion Matt Hughes in his return to the Ultimate Fighting Championship the year before, took a convincing unanimous decision from Sakuraba in their second encounter. The thrill of the victory was short-lived, however, as Gracie’s post-fight drug test came back with more than 25 times the normal level of nandrolone, an anabolic steroid.

Gracie, naturally, denied the positive test: “I have no idea what they’re talking about. Look at my first UFC: 178 [pounds]. Look at my last fight: 180. For accusing me of using drugs … I never gained a pound in my life. It’s not like I went from 178 to 200 pounds. It’s ridiculous.”

The result was especially ironic given Gracie’s outspoken views on performance-enhancing drugs. As he said of Mark Kerr, who admitted to using steroids, “Milk does a body good, but not that good.” Perhaps Gracie, too, should have stuck to the milk.

Number 4 » He tested positive for the anabolic steroid drostanalone, and, in the absence of a suitable replacement, Affliction was forced to cancel the entire event. Aside from Bellator MMA’s lone venture into the pay-per-view business, Affliction was the last organization to really attempt to break into the UFC’s market share.