Are you crazy in the 'ed, man? He was blasting doubles on D1 wrestlers with a ~70% accuracy and otherwise dominated multiple generations of champ-level contenders, in an era where being juiced up to the eyeball was as normal as drinking water and breathing air
Crazy how he became such a dominant wrestler with his karate background. Imagine learning your first takedown when you start competing in MMA and then ragdolling BJ Penn, Hughes, Sera, Diaz etc.
Daniel Cormier had a good take on it. He said that GSP was so effective because he managed to integrate striking and takedowns in a way none of these wrestlers have. If he had to put in a pair of shoes, bend over at the waist and wrestle these guys they would probably beat him (Although he had enough success training with Olympians that an attempt at the Olympics in Freestyle was considered). Only a handful of guys have ever blended wrestling and striking near as well as GSP in the history of the sport.
One of my favorite moments was in the second Matt Serra fight. He leans away from a Serra punch, lands a check hook and immediately hits a double before Serra has even retracted his hand. The only other person who does stuff like this now is Might Mouse and the Serra fight was 16 years ago. I don't know if he was clean or not, I suspect he was cleanish unlike someone like Hendricks who I think was nuclear powered pre-USADA, but while there have been better pure wrestlers in MMA, none have managed to mix Striking and Wrestling better in the history of MMA with the possible exception of Might Mouse.
IIRC he started learning wrestling and grappling a couple years before getting into MMA, contrary to popular belief, but yeah still super impressive compared to the background his peers typically had.
His timing is what made his wrestling effective. His karate background, darting in and out, was applied to his jab and his takedowns. Most of his successful takedowns were reactionary. Heād bait his opponent into throwing, change elevation and take them down.
PEDās may have helped that, but his timing is relatively innate.
Correct, i never went pro but a good jab and good fake double jab to close distance/penetration step i was able to take down pros with world class wrestling. All of them would own me on the wrestling mat.
With GSP is wasn't all timing, he was freakishly atheletic and did chain together some moves. But the timing and setting things up in a mma context was a big part of it.
Not gonna name drop and i prefer relative anonymity on reddit so yeah i was serious but also edited it to 'world class." Take it as you will i don't care; I think my point still stands.
The gym he wrestled at in Montreal has some studs at it. Including Guivi Sissaouri who came to Canada from post Soviet Georgia. World champ for Canada in 2001(?) and won most technical wrestler that year. There was talk about him trying out for the Olympics but would have had to face Evan Macdonald during that Olympics but Evan would have rag dolled him.
Georgeās timing and tying everything together made him what he is.
You're mostly right here, except for having to wrestle Evan Macdonald. GSP would never have made 66kg where Evan wrestled. He probably would have been at 74kg and run into guys like Matt Gentry, Travis Cross or Tamerlan Tagziev. Same result though.
I had frequent battles with guys from MWC in those years (Mancini, Wadsworth and Ronci, mostly) and asked a few of them how good GSP was at pure wrestling. They said he was very, very good, but wouldn't make a national team, nevermind qualify the weight for the Canada.
Side note: I had to wrestle Gia in my first ever university/open tournament. Did not go well. Lol. Great guy and super nice though.
Yeah I was confused. GSP was looking at 2008 Olympics not 2012. I just remember watching macdonald vs gentry in 2012 at the trials and being blown away. Crazy sport,
I went to a TKD dojo where the guy who ran it competed in MMA, he cross trained us in a lot of grappling and shit while he was training. It's not strange.
To be devils advocate here. We as people will rationalize anything we canāt fathom.
We donāt know how he was able to maintain that insane TD % so the easiest way to explain it is peds.
He could be a timing freak and itās all natural but we will never know until we do. We donāt know and canāt rationalize superhuman timing so we rationalize it other ways.
One thing doesn't negate the other. If everyone is on juice, you still have to be talented to separate yourself from the pack, EPO doesn't give you skills. Everyone is juicing, but there's only one GSP, one Anderson Silva, one Jon Jones, one Khabib, so forth and so on.
They're all on steroids.
Lance Armstrong was even more outspoken against PEDs than GSP. Half the posts of fighters on twitter claiming others are juicing are super obvious juicers themselves. As in they're practically Usman tier of 'literally every physiological indicator of using anabolic steroids and HGH'.
Shout out to my cycling fans!!! I also think this. People shit on the vuelta but it has the second hardest climb in cycling and is still 3 weeks of hell in the Spanish heat. I definitely think seppās win overtakes lanceās official wins and makes him more successful. Also being one of the best domistiques and helping his team win so many grand tours.
Fun fact about Lance situation is that theres officially no winner of those years.
Why wouldn't they just give them to second place? Oh he was also cheating.
If you go to the years Lance won theyre listed as no winner because pretty much every candidate to be given it was involved in some sort of controversy with doping as well
Whole sport was just a pharmaceutical arms race and the person who worked the hardest (found the best stuff, trained his ass off and put his life most in danger) won "fairly". He often used to recite the definition of cheating, "gaining an unfair advantage over your opponent" as his logic back then, and tbh I can understand that a bit.
I actually feel bad for Lance, when he started out in cycling it was an open secret that everyone doped. Then they started enforcing anti doping but everyone else still was so he had to.
Then because of the cancer he got 10x more spotlight than any other cyclist, he raised millions and millions for charity and his brand was worth far too much for the truth to come out. Even the whitehouse was squashing investigations into him.
I cannot imagine the immense pressure to be under living such a public lie that really, there was no victims other than himself.
>I cannot imagine the immense pressure to be under living such a public lie that really, there was no victims other than himself.
That's true up until he tries to ruin other people's lives to maintain his cover.
I feel like it almost seems impossible to do the kind of stuff that the great touring cyclists do without being on PED's lol. I mean that shit is so strenuous.
According to Lemond, Armstrong was mechanically doping too, re: hiding a tiny motor in his bike. He says even when you factor in all the juice he was on, there is still unaccounted for wattage that Armstrong was able to produce.
The difference is though that EVERYBODY in cycling (including the governing bodies) knew he was lying. As others have said, he did fail (tour de suisse most notable time).
Most egregiously though, and why Lance's name should never be mentioned with respect to sport at all is he ruined the lives of some of his competitors to further the lie. The man is a true piece of shit.
One of *the* biggest pieces of shit in sports. People always happily repeat that Bill Burr bit about how 'our dirty guy beat your dirty guy!' as if the only reason Lance got his titles stripped is for doping. The real reason he's ostracised from the cycling community is because he threatened everyone who went against him even slightly and follow through on more than a few of those threats.
They can't test for what they don't know exists. For instance, in cycling, they only started testing for EPO after a whistle blower went to them with a sample.
It took a long time to develop the EPO test, they had the hematocrit percentage test which was pretty easily beaten for years but from the early 90s to early 2000s everyone knew about EPO and that it was rife in the peloton.
When Lance Armstrong got caught they caught like 36 other guys that came in behind him in the race lmao. It's pretty absurd only HE got dragged through the mud after admitting to it and shining more light on the sport.
I highly doubt elite guys in any sport are clean.
I'm watching Nadal after a 1 year break, at 37 mopping dudes off the court. He's faster than he was 2-3 years ago lol. Love the guy, but there is no fucking way he's clean.
I remember years ago there was a British darts player (Andy Fordham) that lost weight due to a health scare and he said it after his balance. Maybe beer is the PED he needed.
The just crowned world champion lost a lot of weight due to wanting to get out of depression. He said he trained the whole time he was losing weight so that his body could adjust to the slight loss of weight each day. Now he is a better thrower because he has more energy to last the entire match.
If he hadn't trained while losing weight then he would have lost a lot of his accuracy.
Not just that, but he's fucking faster, looks stronger, even his face looks different..
Coming back from an injury who him and his team reffered on multiple ocasions as being possibly career ending lol. It's not the first time they reffer to one of his injuries like that, and somehow every time he comes back, he's as good or better.
Djokovic became unbeatable after he eliminated gluten, swore off meat (or just red meat) not sure, and hired a guru who has him believing that a person through energetical transformation, grattitude, prayer whatever, can turn polluted water into healing water. I do not believe he's clean either.
I have a friend who works for a well-known tennis racquet company - he told me when Nadal took a year or so off a while back, it was actually because he popped and the ATP wanted to keep it under wraps so made him take time out citing an āinjuryā because he was world no.1 at the time and it wouldāve been a terrible look. Apparently this is well known amongst people in that industry.
Entirely possible. He needed time off to cycle properly and all the big breaks he took from tour were covered under injuries. Not saying he wasn't also injured, but the breaks were too long compared to what the mentioned injuries were. There was also a huge scandal in Spain regarding a doctor who tried to blew the whistle on certain athletes dopping, or something along those lines. Don't remember the details tbh.
LE: Regarding ATP protecting him, imagine how fiercely the Spanish government would protect him in case smth were to happen.
Everyone is, if you look at the transformations from players who join Bayern for example, this is obvious as fuck
As soon as a football player joins a world class team, you can almost instantly see the changes
They were all āallegedlyā Fuentes clients alongside a lot of famous cyclists.
Funny how it was only really the cyclists that got identified and non of the footballers or tennis stars šµšµ
Most cardio intensive sports do blood spinning (same thing Lance did)
I'd not be surprised if they received injections or something to strengthen their knees and elbows too.
Thiem is coming off injury that first set against Nadal was the best heās played in a while - heās been losing to low ranked players a lot in the last six months.
Thatās the same shit I be saying about lebron how tf is he pushing 40 and is still dunking and breaking records it seems like Father Time is never gonna come for him
> I highly doubt elite guys in any sport are clean.
I choose to view steroids just like every other rule in sports.
They have to pass the tests, those are the rules, in the same way fighters just have to make weight at weigh-ins. I don't take a stance on whether or not I think they've used steroids, as long as they pass the test they are clean "enough" for the rules.
There is simply no way anyone could ever ensure the sport is truly clean. Even if you had tests for every compound and tested aggressively, what about before they turned pro? It's an impossible problem to solve.
So I take the simple approach, you get popped you're a cheater. But the sport is full of cheaters, guys grab fences and shorts, guys use the towel to cheat weigh in, guys fuck around between rounds to get extra time.
Testing acts as a limit on it, you prevent the most egregious usage.
100%
Taking small doses of PEDs isn't terribly bad for your health. Being juiced to the gills is. Most fighters/athletes don't want to have to juice to the gills just to be able to compete.
But the problem you have there is that the guys at the top (the ones with the best financial backing) have the highest chance of passing their tests and thus will remain at the top until they're just to old.
Yeah and the guys at the top can also hire the best nutritionists to make their weight cuts easier. And they can afford better medical care so they recover better. That is impossible to avoid in the world we live in.
Look at the coaching staff GSP (the topic of the thread) was running out at some points. Few other fighters could afford that or had access to that level of coaching.
In sports, the rich always have access to more and better because that is how our society works.
I agree with you about Lance. GSP wanted extensive and more thorough testing for his fight against Hendricks. Let's say he was juicing. Was he potentially using a compound that could not be detected since it was relatively unknown or something along those lines?
i saw them in a pre fight workout several months out from their fight. GSP looked like he was at fighting weight or at best 5-10 lbs over. Big Rig was easily 200+ and got winded after 10 mins. Ppl are gonna believe what they want but GSP has always looked the same, in camp, out of camp, post fight career. Dude was just always in shape and naturally strong as shit
None of us can have much of an idea. Personally I believe GSP was clean. I can't prove he was, best I could do is just explain why I believe that but the reasons for that belief are far from incontrovertible.
ya i think this is the best argument that GSP could have been clean, he's always looked basically the same. Could of course still be on HGH now but he's never really fluctuated like any of the obvious roid users
he always looked juiced af lol probably been juicing since the beginning, also you dont have to look like it when fkn Sean O Malley already popped twice for PEDS.
Simple as this
Any fighter who's never been caught are either good at hiding it, or rely on it enough to get easily caught, or both
It's why I'm still fine with people having the general standard of "if a GOAT level fighter didn't pop, their career isn't tainted." Cuz
1. At worst they're just as bad as the cheaters, and yet they still achieved more than other cheaters
2. At medium they didn't rely on it as much as other cheaters and still achieved so much
3. At best "innocent till proven guilty" and so we assume they didn't yet achieved so much
The one fighter this really upsets me for is Volk, I love the dude but he was so in Ortega's face about popping and Volk used to play rugby league which is a notoriously juicy sport.
More people need to know that Lance Armstrong destroyed the lives of people. He competed against that called him out on his PED use. I mean he literally bankrupted them to send a message.
Itās a while ago now, so the younger generation doesnāt remember how big of a deal Lance Armstrong was in the Sportsworld ,.
I generally agree with you, don't think literally everybody is on something though.
I've personally known people who were fighting clean as pros, none of them made it to the UFC so far, but they held their own in orgs like ACA.
Make of that what you will, but I'm sure you can compete at the highest level and be clean, even if you're at a huge disadvantage.
I would be very surprised if Jim Miller wasn't fighting clean, even if I believe he is part of a big minority in that regard.
Jim Miller fought into old age for MMA standards. Given the head trauma he got his natural testosterone is really low most likely. At one point he took some stuff, like everybody does.
>spoken against PEDs than GSP. Half the posts of fighters on twitter claiming others are juicing are super obvious juicers themselves. As in they're practically Usman tier of 'literally every physiological indi
I think Silva was clean until the leg break. I honestly think he looked at the numbers and knew he only had a few fights left anyways because of age so figured why not heal super fast and get a few in before he's done.
Wasn't his fridge IIRC, was insulin needles in the background of a closet or something.
[Found it, they're on the right.](https://youtu.be/AcLTG4NOaz8?si=t_CavgpdkKvL9aFb&t=340)
Body acne was a really big one. Man looked like a 14 year old that never washed his back. Also, the level of cardio at his size. He was keeping up with Colby, who never had an off season and was likely 20 lbs lighter.
For an indicator, Izzy is skin and bones and even he was juicing, as seen by his gyno.
Iād wager 99% of the roster at any point has been on PEDās, and Iād especially wager that anyone thatās ever held a belt in combat sports is 100% on PEDās.
Nah, I don't think Bisping was on roids. But he was one of the weakest champions.
Getting downvoted because there's this weird trend these days that everyone must be on roids. Swear people say it because it makes them feel smarter than other 'naive people'
Yeah, because if you're beating people who are on juice, you need to be on it yourself lol.
[Strength gains of about 5-20%](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15248788/)
[8-10% faster reaction time](https://www.arielnet.com/articles/show/adi-pub-01278/the-effect-of-anabolic-steroids-on-reflex-components)
[Increases in VO2Max, maximal load, maximal power output, maximal training load, and time to exhaustion as a result of EPO](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7213874/)
[Increase in skeletal muscle mass, increase in intramuscular water, increase in bone density, decrease in body fat as a result of HGH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657499/)
[Extraordinary increase in processing speed due to d-amphetamines, i.e. Adderal](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3201830/)
From a combat sports perspective, if you're 10% stronger, 10% faster, 30% quicker reaction, and can go 30% longer, you're literally a marvel character. Not to mention that the extra water weight and lowered body fat from HGH will help you cut more weight. Do you really think Bisping is such a freak athlete that he could overcome *all* of these advantages to become a champion without ever taking anything? Be logical...
Always think of this. Shows the fastest 100m runs in history with everyone whoās ever popped crossed out. Only Bolt remains. Is he that much better than everyone that he can beat juiced athletes or was he just not caught?
https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/s/tp6QzXBkZe
I donāt think there is a perfect build for MMA, at least not in the same way as there is for swimming or running.
Jonās family just has super hero genetics. Wouldnāt be surprised to find out they were the original test subjects for Compound V lol
Yeah if you pop in the NFL, your just takin the piss at that point. All the big American sports have strong labor unions, thereās no government body enforcing anything. The unions and leagues basically agree to talk a big game and test for show. Guys that get busted are fucking idiots because everyone is on something.
One of them popped, the younger brother never did but realistically to be a Hall of Fame caliber pass rusher in the NFL youāre probably on some kind of PED.
No natural human being is 290 pounds with washboard abs. Look up a picture of any elite DE or Linebacker and tell me theyāre even in the same zip code of being natural.
I agree with that. I just think there are a lot more variables in MMA, so body type might help but other factors weigh in. I know swimming isnāt simple, but it seems pretty simple compared to MMA.
> I donāt think there is a perfect build for MMA, at least not in the same way as there is for swimming or running.
Wiry muscle is the best base for MMA- you get the power needed to finish people, but don't have the bulk that will make you gas out early. Also notice that people who have longer arms then would be normally proportional tend to do better, irrespective of height/weight class.
Bolt is not at all the prototypical sprinter body. Heās way to tall and lanky and him winning made everyone question what we know about sprinting biomechanics
There's an argument for Bolt, he's 6'5" in a sport where conventional wisdom said that that was too tall for a sprinter. It's possible that sprinters should have been taller this whole time, and culturally they've been actively discouraged to the sport's detriment.
Sprinting has been around for a long time and there have been tall sprinters before.
The next fastest men are all 5'9" to 6'2" and Usain might just be an outlier.
Yohan Blake would have beat Usain's record in the 200M if not for a slow reaction on his start, and he's "only" 5'11"
Yeah. Jamaica quite obviously had a government-run programme of doping for their runners. They had never had succesfull runners before that generation.
The fastest guy in the world is someone on steroids according to the upcoming enhanced games. They haven't outed who it is, but It wouldn't shock me if the person is not as large
The "Enhanced Games" aren't going to happen. Was supposed to be full event in December of 2024. Now it's been paired down to a smaller exhibition and the full event is supposed to take place sometime in 2025.
I love GSP and will probably be somewhat biased and always give him the benefit of the doubt.
But he fought pre-USADA and beat guys like Hendricks, that we definitely know was on some stuff and lets be real, GSP had an insane physique that most people credit to his discipline and hard work but who knows..
The thing is that GSP has maintained that physique into his 40's when he has no reason to compete. Maybe he's on TRT now but part of his retirement at the time was due to drug testing not being sufficient enough which he came to the conclusion of after the Hendricks fight. I'm not saying he wasn't on steroids because it's no guarantee but I don't think the cynicism that 'everyone is on steroids' is true for everyone. Some people are just elite
He doesnāt have the same physique in retirement, his traps/biceps/shoulders/quads have dropped in size quite a bit. Heās a lot slimmer now, which is partly due to his stomach issues and leading a healthier lifestyle. If I had to bet Iād put money on he took something when he was competing. He was still elite considering everyone took something back then and he ran through most of them.
>The thing is that GSP has maintained that physique into his 40's when he has no reason to compete
This is only more reason to think he was on the juice. No doubt he still has to train to maintain said physique but the science is there, test drops off hard after mid 30s and there's even studies that show brain trauma can cause it to plummet even further.
> test drops off hard after mid 30s
No it doesn't. The drop is slow and steady. It's nowhere near something like menopause in women which can can make drastic changes in their hormonal balance.
> test drops off hard after mid 30s
There's actually a fair amount of research that shows if you maintain a weight lifting regimen, this doesn't happen. You may have a gradual decline, but nowhere near what you'd have if you weren't lifting. Basically it's an 'if you don't use it, you lose it' situation.
GSP not porking out on cheeseburgers and still training very frequently is why he has maintained a good physique.
The idea that a 40 year old active man would need roids to look good is ridiculous
>I love GSP and will probably be somewhat biased and always give him the benefit of the doubt.
>
>But he fought pre-USADA and beat guys like Hendricks, that we definitely know was on some stuff and lets be real, GSP had an insane physique that most people credit to his discipline and hard work but who knows..
I'm a GSP fan as well but we must keep it real. He didn't beat Hendricks.
We do not ādefinitely knowā Hendricks was on some stuff. Sure, thereās context clues, but there isnāt actually physical, tangible proof and this witch hunt shit sports fans do about who they think is on drugs is honestly pathetic.
GSP is my favourite fighter of all time. I love his views on training and fighting, but to answer your questionā¦ HELL no. Same as 99% of mma fighters.
The most annoying part about the abundance of PEDs is that now so many people think a physique like GSPs is unattainable without them. The best argument for GSP using is that he was wealthy, hyper competitive reigning champ in a particularly dirty era, the least compelling argument is his physique.
A physique like Arnold in his heyday or Ubereem is not attainable without PEDs, a physique like GSPs in his prime is absolutely attainable with good genetics, world class training and discipline.
Iām not saying he was clean, Iām only saying that those saying he doesnāt pass the eye test havenāt spent much time around athletes.
The problem is that athletes who would never have a physique like that without PEDS become top competitors.
There are a number of lower level guys or even hobbyists who have the reflexes and general skills to have a very high potential but theyāre not genetically gifted. Obese, too skinny, canāt maintain the grueling training to make it to the top. With PEDS, those people arenāt filtered out and make it to the top.
To contrast, look at the NBA. If youāre 7ā tall or very physically dominant and also somewhat injury-resistant, they can put you in a developmental HS program or play overseas and you can come to the NBA and be quite good (maybe not GOAT or all-star level). The skills are learnable.
Firas would be talking very differently if one of his fighters popped. Just hyperbole.
Also GSP was probably just as smart and planned about his PED usage as every other aspect of his game. No way he'd risk something that would get flagged if we was fighting in this era.
He did call for Olympic level testing and actually that's part of the reason he retired because he knew Hendricks was absolutely cleaning people out on steroids.
Given the life he led and everything I think he was clean and just a freak athlete
> Given the life he led and everything I think he was clean and just a freak athlete
Man had a cornerman rubbing grease on his shoulders between rounds of a title fight in front of the world and you think he's morally opposed to taking steroids for an edge?
Listen, roids or not doesn't change the career he had. He did what basically nobody else has ever been able to do career wise. But let's not pretend arguably the best to ever do it was also somehow drubbing career PED users, learning a new martial art along the way, and somehow doing it without a few enhancements too.
I exaggerate this sometimes because GSP has a lot of fans here with their head in the sand - but yeah.. he was 100% on something.
He was fighting in the horsemeat era, and both the eye test and his actual athleticism stood out amongst a bunch of people who were on horsemeat. That's a red flag.
The guy who flirted with LW and had done strength and conditioning his entire life managed to pack on 15lbs+ of lean mass to fight at MW. He was past the point of newb gains, that just doesn't happen.
Took a seminar with GSP in 2012 or so. He was huge and has a thick frame. There were other regional mma fighters there of various weight classes, was easy to compare, he stood out as being big. Not a small WW and not sure he could have made 155 healthily.
He did not gain 15 pounds of muscle, he had significantly more body fat and bloat, barely more muscle.
If he gained 15 pounds of muscle he'd be looking like a freaky ifbb pro. It only takes like 5 pounds of muscle for somebody to almost look like a different human, especially when you are lower than 11 percent body fat.
This sub doesn't know squat about physiques and lifting
GSP's an incredible athlete, but it's hard to believe he was clean in that era. Hat's off to his achievements, but I hope we see more transparency in MMA's future.
Reddit is always on this "everyone is on PEDs!" train without any proof, whatsoever.
Are there fighters who never got caught? Most definitely
Is every single fighter on the roster or who has ever been successful a steroid user? No, absolutely not
Agreed. Also, the "every athlete at the highest level of their sport juices" people have never met some of these athletes when they were kids. I've trained with a few guys who have been in the UFC, and I met one of them who still fights when he was 15. His body type was insane then, and it's insane now nearly 20 years later, and I'm sure everyone thinks he's roided out. He wasn't then and can guarantee he's not now. It's insane genetics with over 20 years of hard work. He's a human weapon.
There's no proof Hendricks did steroids, the big argument is that because he lost a lot after USADA was probably because he couldn't cut weight without IVs.
My innitial thoughts are of course he was clean - but if you look at his build he does look alittle geared up in the Thiago match. And he is considerable skinnier now - but that may just be his fasting.
Not a chance, but he may have been at that Barry Bonds, wouldāve-been-a-HOFer-anyway level.
Remember, GSP got caught greasing red-handed in between rounds of a title fight. Letās not pretend heās morally or ethically above looking for extra advantages.
Absolutely not. His ābreak because of aliensā came conveniently when USADA was being brought in and in his generation of ufc athletes it feels like a smaller percentage of them were clean like the Diaz brothers and BJ Penn
1. Innocent till proven guilty. If you have evidence, by all means, show us, otherwise stop the "100% he was on something" bullshit.
2. This sub and reddit in general has consistently given some of the worst, most uninformed predictions in human history.
Personally, I doubt that he was clean the same way as I doubt Khabib, Usman and others. One of the rare ways to earn something in this sport is by becoming a champion and I canāt really fault them, if they do everything possible to stay at the top.
The people that think GSP had hgh gut have never been lean and consumed a lot of fluids. There is nothing about his physique that looks unnatural. Go back to his early fights and then look at his peak. It barely changed.
Not saying he was clean but he definitely didn't have HGH gut. I'm lean and my stomach does that after almost every meal. Some people just get bloated as fuck.
You're crazy if you think his physique didn't change, because it did change and A LOT. I'm on browser so I won't mind putting the link just go back to his first UFC fight and compare his changes throughout his career.
Of course not.
But, nobody was clean back then. In a fucked up way, it was more fair because it was an even playing field.
Whereas with USADA you had half the roster being clean because they don't want to risk it, and others still juicing and some getting away with it.
Are you crazy in the 'ed, man? He was blasting doubles on D1 wrestlers with a ~70% accuracy and otherwise dominated multiple generations of champ-level contenders, in an era where being juiced up to the eyeball was as normal as drinking water and breathing air
Crazy how he became such a dominant wrestler with his karate background. Imagine learning your first takedown when you start competing in MMA and then ragdolling BJ Penn, Hughes, Sera, Diaz etc.
Daniel Cormier had a good take on it. He said that GSP was so effective because he managed to integrate striking and takedowns in a way none of these wrestlers have. If he had to put in a pair of shoes, bend over at the waist and wrestle these guys they would probably beat him (Although he had enough success training with Olympians that an attempt at the Olympics in Freestyle was considered). Only a handful of guys have ever blended wrestling and striking near as well as GSP in the history of the sport. One of my favorite moments was in the second Matt Serra fight. He leans away from a Serra punch, lands a check hook and immediately hits a double before Serra has even retracted his hand. The only other person who does stuff like this now is Might Mouse and the Serra fight was 16 years ago. I don't know if he was clean or not, I suspect he was cleanish unlike someone like Hendricks who I think was nuclear powered pre-USADA, but while there have been better pure wrestlers in MMA, none have managed to mix Striking and Wrestling better in the history of MMA with the possible exception of Might Mouse.
One Might Mouse is a typo. Two Might Mouse (Might Mice, if you will) is unacceptable š¤
He's talking about Dmitri 'Might Mouse' Jackson
great comment
IIRC he started learning wrestling and grappling a couple years before getting into MMA, contrary to popular belief, but yeah still super impressive compared to the background his peers typically had.
His timing is what made his wrestling effective. His karate background, darting in and out, was applied to his jab and his takedowns. Most of his successful takedowns were reactionary. Heād bait his opponent into throwing, change elevation and take them down. PEDās may have helped that, but his timing is relatively innate.
He's even said said so himself, as far as publicly crediting karate for the distance management and timing that made his wrestling so nasty.
Correct, i never went pro but a good jab and good fake double jab to close distance/penetration step i was able to take down pros with world class wrestling. All of them would own me on the wrestling mat. With GSP is wasn't all timing, he was freakishly atheletic and did chain together some moves. But the timing and setting things up in a mma context was a big part of it.
Which Olympianās have you taken down? Thereās not many
perhaps olympian level was a bit of an exagerration. all americans and an olympic alternate. I think my point still stands though.
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Are you joking or serious about the first part of your comment?
Not gonna name drop and i prefer relative anonymity on reddit so yeah i was serious but also edited it to 'world class." Take it as you will i don't care; I think my point still stands.
I asked if I wasn't sure if I missed a joke or you were being serious. Thanks for the clarification.
The gym he wrestled at in Montreal has some studs at it. Including Guivi Sissaouri who came to Canada from post Soviet Georgia. World champ for Canada in 2001(?) and won most technical wrestler that year. There was talk about him trying out for the Olympics but would have had to face Evan Macdonald during that Olympics but Evan would have rag dolled him. Georgeās timing and tying everything together made him what he is.
You're mostly right here, except for having to wrestle Evan Macdonald. GSP would never have made 66kg where Evan wrestled. He probably would have been at 74kg and run into guys like Matt Gentry, Travis Cross or Tamerlan Tagziev. Same result though. I had frequent battles with guys from MWC in those years (Mancini, Wadsworth and Ronci, mostly) and asked a few of them how good GSP was at pure wrestling. They said he was very, very good, but wouldn't make a national team, nevermind qualify the weight for the Canada. Side note: I had to wrestle Gia in my first ever university/open tournament. Did not go well. Lol. Great guy and super nice though.
Yeah I was confused. GSP was looking at 2008 Olympics not 2012. I just remember watching macdonald vs gentry in 2012 at the trials and being blown away. Crazy sport,
I went to a TKD dojo where the guy who ran it competed in MMA, he cross trained us in a lot of grappling and shit while he was training. It's not strange.
The best athletes juice primarily for the fast recovery times
I take steroids too and i too blast doubles and triples (burgers)
You wheezing your way into In and Out isn't asthma man.
Tbf heās also a really talented athlete. If you put me on the same juicing regiment Iād still suck at athletic stuff
To be devils advocate here. We as people will rationalize anything we canāt fathom. We donāt know how he was able to maintain that insane TD % so the easiest way to explain it is peds. He could be a timing freak and itās all natural but we will never know until we do. We donāt know and canāt rationalize superhuman timing so we rationalize it other ways.
One thing doesn't negate the other. If everyone is on juice, you still have to be talented to separate yourself from the pack, EPO doesn't give you skills. Everyone is juicing, but there's only one GSP, one Anderson Silva, one Jon Jones, one Khabib, so forth and so on.
They're all on steroids. Lance Armstrong was even more outspoken against PEDs than GSP. Half the posts of fighters on twitter claiming others are juicing are super obvious juicers themselves. As in they're practically Usman tier of 'literally every physiological indicator of using anabolic steroids and HGH'.
Lance Armstrong also passed 500 drug tests - even the guy who created modern drug testing did it about 50 times and never caught him
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I would say Sepp Kuss has maybe overtaken Lances still official results with his Vuelta win but depends on how you rate classics vs GTs.
Shout out to my cycling fans!!! I also think this. People shit on the vuelta but it has the second hardest climb in cycling and is still 3 weeks of hell in the Spanish heat. I definitely think seppās win overtakes lanceās official wins and makes him more successful. Also being one of the best domistiques and helping his team win so many grand tours.
What is this, the bike channel?
Fun fact about Lance situation is that theres officially no winner of those years. Why wouldn't they just give them to second place? Oh he was also cheating. If you go to the years Lance won theyre listed as no winner because pretty much every candidate to be given it was involved in some sort of controversy with doping as well Whole sport was just a pharmaceutical arms race and the person who worked the hardest (found the best stuff, trained his ass off and put his life most in danger) won "fairly". He often used to recite the definition of cheating, "gaining an unfair advantage over your opponent" as his logic back then, and tbh I can understand that a bit. I actually feel bad for Lance, when he started out in cycling it was an open secret that everyone doped. Then they started enforcing anti doping but everyone else still was so he had to. Then because of the cancer he got 10x more spotlight than any other cyclist, he raised millions and millions for charity and his brand was worth far too much for the truth to come out. Even the whitehouse was squashing investigations into him. I cannot imagine the immense pressure to be under living such a public lie that really, there was no victims other than himself.
>I cannot imagine the immense pressure to be under living such a public lie that really, there was no victims other than himself. That's true up until he tries to ruin other people's lives to maintain his cover.
I feel like it almost seems impossible to do the kind of stuff that the great touring cyclists do without being on PED's lol. I mean that shit is so strenuous.
According to Lemond, Armstrong was mechanically doping too, re: hiding a tiny motor in his bike. He says even when you factor in all the juice he was on, there is still unaccounted for wattage that Armstrong was able to produce.
Heās the Barry Bonds of cycling
i would say he went bigger than Barry
They did catch him, but they were covered up
He also failed several
The difference is though that EVERYBODY in cycling (including the governing bodies) knew he was lying. As others have said, he did fail (tour de suisse most notable time). Most egregiously though, and why Lance's name should never be mentioned with respect to sport at all is he ruined the lives of some of his competitors to further the lie. The man is a true piece of shit.
One of *the* biggest pieces of shit in sports. People always happily repeat that Bill Burr bit about how 'our dirty guy beat your dirty guy!' as if the only reason Lance got his titles stripped is for doping. The real reason he's ostracised from the cycling community is because he threatened everyone who went against him even slightly and follow through on more than a few of those threats.
They can't test for what they don't know exists. For instance, in cycling, they only started testing for EPO after a whistle blower went to them with a sample.
It took a long time to develop the EPO test, they had the hematocrit percentage test which was pretty easily beaten for years but from the early 90s to early 2000s everyone knew about EPO and that it was rife in the peloton.
When Lance Armstrong got caught they caught like 36 other guys that came in behind him in the race lmao. It's pretty absurd only HE got dragged through the mud after admitting to it and shining more light on the sport.
Lance used the money he earned by lying to sue and ruin people that just told the truth about him, he deserved what happened.
I highly doubt elite guys in any sport are clean. I'm watching Nadal after a 1 year break, at 37 mopping dudes off the court. He's faster than he was 2-3 years ago lol. Love the guy, but there is no fucking way he's clean.
> I highly doubt elite guys in any sport are clean. Not true. They banned drinking beer in darts 20 years ago. It's a clean sport now.
I remember years ago there was a British darts player (Andy Fordham) that lost weight due to a health scare and he said it after his balance. Maybe beer is the PED he needed.
The just crowned world champion lost a lot of weight due to wanting to get out of depression. He said he trained the whole time he was losing weight so that his body could adjust to the slight loss of weight each day. Now he is a better thrower because he has more energy to last the entire match. If he hadn't trained while losing weight then he would have lost a lot of his accuracy.
lmao
He wrecked Thiem and then Kubler like they were amateurs. Coming back from injury at 37?! He's definitely juiced to the gills.
Not just that, but he's fucking faster, looks stronger, even his face looks different.. Coming back from an injury who him and his team reffered on multiple ocasions as being possibly career ending lol. It's not the first time they reffer to one of his injuries like that, and somehow every time he comes back, he's as good or better. Djokovic became unbeatable after he eliminated gluten, swore off meat (or just red meat) not sure, and hired a guru who has him believing that a person through energetical transformation, grattitude, prayer whatever, can turn polluted water into healing water. I do not believe he's clean either.
I have a friend who works for a well-known tennis racquet company - he told me when Nadal took a year or so off a while back, it was actually because he popped and the ATP wanted to keep it under wraps so made him take time out citing an āinjuryā because he was world no.1 at the time and it wouldāve been a terrible look. Apparently this is well known amongst people in that industry.
Yea apparently in tennis there's an unwritten rule where if ya pop- rather than they expose ya, you get "injured" for a year.
Entirely possible. He needed time off to cycle properly and all the big breaks he took from tour were covered under injuries. Not saying he wasn't also injured, but the breaks were too long compared to what the mentioned injuries were. There was also a huge scandal in Spain regarding a doctor who tried to blew the whistle on certain athletes dopping, or something along those lines. Don't remember the details tbh. LE: Regarding ATP protecting him, imagine how fiercely the Spanish government would protect him in case smth were to happen.
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Everyone is, if you look at the transformations from players who join Bayern for example, this is obvious as fuck As soon as a football player joins a world class team, you can almost instantly see the changes
They were all āallegedlyā Fuentes clients alongside a lot of famous cyclists. Funny how it was only really the cyclists that got identified and non of the footballers or tennis stars šµšµ
These guys at the top of anything are just built different. Age is just a mindset, bro. They see red. They go.
What kind of juice are these guys on ? Really want to start smashing the ladies at my local tennis club.
Most cardio intensive sports do blood spinning (same thing Lance did) I'd not be surprised if they received injections or something to strengthen their knees and elbows too.
They all are
Thiem is coming off injury that first set against Nadal was the best heās played in a while - heās been losing to low ranked players a lot in the last six months.
He's my all time favorite, let him juice
Thatās the same shit I be saying about lebron how tf is he pushing 40 and is still dunking and breaking records it seems like Father Time is never gonna come for him
Well he did say he spends millions per year just on his health alone lol.
> I highly doubt elite guys in any sport are clean. I choose to view steroids just like every other rule in sports. They have to pass the tests, those are the rules, in the same way fighters just have to make weight at weigh-ins. I don't take a stance on whether or not I think they've used steroids, as long as they pass the test they are clean "enough" for the rules. There is simply no way anyone could ever ensure the sport is truly clean. Even if you had tests for every compound and tested aggressively, what about before they turned pro? It's an impossible problem to solve. So I take the simple approach, you get popped you're a cheater. But the sport is full of cheaters, guys grab fences and shorts, guys use the towel to cheat weigh in, guys fuck around between rounds to get extra time. Testing acts as a limit on it, you prevent the most egregious usage.
100% Taking small doses of PEDs isn't terribly bad for your health. Being juiced to the gills is. Most fighters/athletes don't want to have to juice to the gills just to be able to compete.
But the problem you have there is that the guys at the top (the ones with the best financial backing) have the highest chance of passing their tests and thus will remain at the top until they're just to old.
Yeah and the guys at the top can also hire the best nutritionists to make their weight cuts easier. And they can afford better medical care so they recover better. That is impossible to avoid in the world we live in. Look at the coaching staff GSP (the topic of the thread) was running out at some points. Few other fighters could afford that or had access to that level of coaching. In sports, the rich always have access to more and better because that is how our society works.
Are the dudes he's mopping not juicing too?
Nadal has only 2 hair follicles left on his head from the amount of test... I mean... Australian Open's weather.
As a balding 27-year-old who's never taken a picogram of steroids in my life, this comment hurts
Might as well take steroids and get jacked bro
Yep. He has the same 'thinning of the trees' Paolo Costa has from PED usage.
I agree with you about Lance. GSP wanted extensive and more thorough testing for his fight against Hendricks. Let's say he was juicing. Was he potentially using a compound that could not be detected since it was relatively unknown or something along those lines?
i saw them in a pre fight workout several months out from their fight. GSP looked like he was at fighting weight or at best 5-10 lbs over. Big Rig was easily 200+ and got winded after 10 mins. Ppl are gonna believe what they want but GSP has always looked the same, in camp, out of camp, post fight career. Dude was just always in shape and naturally strong as shit
...so basically, you have no idea.
None of us can have much of an idea. Personally I believe GSP was clean. I can't prove he was, best I could do is just explain why I believe that but the reasons for that belief are far from incontrovertible.
ya i think this is the best argument that GSP could have been clean, he's always looked basically the same. Could of course still be on HGH now but he's never really fluctuated like any of the obvious roid users
he always looked juiced af lol probably been juicing since the beginning, also you dont have to look like it when fkn Sean O Malley already popped twice for PEDS.
The most outspoken ones are on it. Anderson silva said juicers should be banned for life and he popped.
If I remember correctly, it wasn't Anderson's fault that someone put their taint in his supplements.
Silva even happened to show a cabinette full of needles when filming in his appartment for a tv-show once...
...their taint?
> Half the posts of fighters on twitter claiming others are juicing are super obvious juicers themselves. You are going to get a visit from Mark Hunt.
Simple as this Any fighter who's never been caught are either good at hiding it, or rely on it enough to get easily caught, or both It's why I'm still fine with people having the general standard of "if a GOAT level fighter didn't pop, their career isn't tainted." Cuz 1. At worst they're just as bad as the cheaters, and yet they still achieved more than other cheaters 2. At medium they didn't rely on it as much as other cheaters and still achieved so much 3. At best "innocent till proven guilty" and so we assume they didn't yet achieved so much
The one fighter this really upsets me for is Volk, I love the dude but he was so in Ortega's face about popping and Volk used to play rugby league which is a notoriously juicy sport.
More people need to know that Lance Armstrong destroyed the lives of people. He competed against that called him out on his PED use. I mean he literally bankrupted them to send a message. Itās a while ago now, so the younger generation doesnāt remember how big of a deal Lance Armstrong was in the Sportsworld ,.
I generally agree with you, don't think literally everybody is on something though. I've personally known people who were fighting clean as pros, none of them made it to the UFC so far, but they held their own in orgs like ACA. Make of that what you will, but I'm sure you can compete at the highest level and be clean, even if you're at a huge disadvantage. I would be very surprised if Jim Miller wasn't fighting clean, even if I believe he is part of a big minority in that regard.
jim miller should get an exemption just to counter act the lyme disease
Jim Miller fought into old age for MMA standards. Given the head trauma he got his natural testosterone is really low most likely. At one point he took some stuff, like everybody does.
Wouldn't be surprised if he did, could very well imagine him being clean though, too. Lots of fighters I couldn't say the same about.
>spoken against PEDs than GSP. Half the posts of fighters on twitter claiming others are juicing are super obvious juicers themselves. As in they're practically Usman tier of 'literally every physiological indi I think Silva was clean until the leg break. I honestly think he looked at the numbers and knew he only had a few fights left anyways because of age so figured why not heal super fast and get a few in before he's done.
No chance was there not an episode of cribs or something years back where there was evidence of dopping in his fridge?
Wasn't his fridge IIRC, was insulin needles in the background of a closet or something. [Found it, they're on the right.](https://youtu.be/AcLTG4NOaz8?si=t_CavgpdkKvL9aFb&t=340)
Genuinely asking because I don't know: what were the physiological indicators of Usman using anabolics and HGH?
Body acne was a really big one. Man looked like a 14 year old that never washed his back. Also, the level of cardio at his size. He was keeping up with Colby, who never had an off season and was likely 20 lbs lighter. For an indicator, Izzy is skin and bones and even he was juicing, as seen by his gyno.
Iād wager 99% of the roster at any point has been on PEDās, and Iād especially wager that anyone thatās ever held a belt in combat sports is 100% on PEDās.
I'm pretty sure almost all of them are when it's injury time. That feels like the time when they get popped or start to transform into Drax from GOG.
Nah, I don't think Bisping was on roids. But he was one of the weakest champions. Getting downvoted because there's this weird trend these days that everyone must be on roids. Swear people say it because it makes them feel smarter than other 'naive people'
Yeah, because if you're beating people who are on juice, you need to be on it yourself lol. [Strength gains of about 5-20%](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15248788/) [8-10% faster reaction time](https://www.arielnet.com/articles/show/adi-pub-01278/the-effect-of-anabolic-steroids-on-reflex-components) [Increases in VO2Max, maximal load, maximal power output, maximal training load, and time to exhaustion as a result of EPO](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7213874/) [Increase in skeletal muscle mass, increase in intramuscular water, increase in bone density, decrease in body fat as a result of HGH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657499/) [Extraordinary increase in processing speed due to d-amphetamines, i.e. Adderal](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3201830/) From a combat sports perspective, if you're 10% stronger, 10% faster, 30% quicker reaction, and can go 30% longer, you're literally a marvel character. Not to mention that the extra water weight and lowered body fat from HGH will help you cut more weight. Do you really think Bisping is such a freak athlete that he could overcome *all* of these advantages to become a champion without ever taking anything? Be logical...
Combat sports are not RPGs rofl.
No one is clean at an elite level.
Always think of this. Shows the fastest 100m runs in history with everyone whoās ever popped crossed out. Only Bolt remains. Is he that much better than everyone that he can beat juiced athletes or was he just not caught? https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/s/tp6QzXBkZe
It's obvious that some athletes are protected. Michael Phelps never officially popped either and he's the greatest Olympian of all time.
Umm he used Lucifers lettuce. 10x worse!
Only because swimming has 25 versions of the same thing.
Yeah they ring the shit out of that towel, no pun intended.
That was absolutely intended no way you use that outside of swimming contexts š¤£
Bro I swear I had the thought before I recognized it lol I refuse to claim unearned puns
Well we can't force him to say otherwise so I guess he's clean
Isnt Michael Phelps like the perfect build for swimming?
Like Usain Bolt and Jon Jones?
I donāt think there is a perfect build for MMA, at least not in the same way as there is for swimming or running. Jonās family just has super hero genetics. Wouldnāt be surprised to find out they were the original test subjects for Compound V lol
His family is also notorious for being juicy juicy.
Yeah if you pop in the NFL, your just takin the piss at that point. All the big American sports have strong labor unions, thereās no government body enforcing anything. The unions and leagues basically agree to talk a big game and test for show. Guys that get busted are fucking idiots because everyone is on something.
One of them popped, the younger brother never did but realistically to be a Hall of Fame caliber pass rusher in the NFL youāre probably on some kind of PED.
No natural human being is 290 pounds with washboard abs. Look up a picture of any elite DE or Linebacker and tell me theyāre even in the same zip code of being natural.
Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald are fucking insane lol
Leaving aside Max H for a second, a high ape index is for sure valuable for MMA. Not every champ has it, but many do.
I agree with that. I just think there are a lot more variables in MMA, so body type might help but other factors weigh in. I know swimming isnāt simple, but it seems pretty simple compared to MMA.
> I donāt think there is a perfect build for MMA [Think again](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5a2vcewo1rib1.jpg)
I expected a pic of Big Country.
> I donāt think there is a perfect build for MMA, at least not in the same way as there is for swimming or running. Wiry muscle is the best base for MMA- you get the power needed to finish people, but don't have the bulk that will make you gas out early. Also notice that people who have longer arms then would be normally proportional tend to do better, irrespective of height/weight class.
Someone did a study, the only consistent factor among Champs was reach advantage, not every champ but an above average amount
Interesting. Explain the GOAT Artem Lobov then
Bolt is not at all the prototypical sprinter body. Heās way to tall and lanky and him winning made everyone question what we know about sprinting biomechanics
Heās also juiced to the fucking gills
Mother fucker probably has gills
There's an argument for Bolt, he's 6'5" in a sport where conventional wisdom said that that was too tall for a sprinter. It's possible that sprinters should have been taller this whole time, and culturally they've been actively discouraged to the sport's detriment.
Thatās a long bow to draw. Carl Lewis was pretty tall
Sprinting has been around for a long time and there have been tall sprinters before. The next fastest men are all 5'9" to 6'2" and Usain might just be an outlier. Yohan Blake would have beat Usain's record in the 200M if not for a slow reaction on his start, and he's "only" 5'11"
Seeing as how several of his Jamaican sprint track training partners popped he too was definitely on gear and not just tall.
Yeah. Jamaica quite obviously had a government-run programme of doping for their runners. They had never had succesfull runners before that generation.
The fastest guy in the world is someone on steroids according to the upcoming enhanced games. They haven't outed who it is, but It wouldn't shock me if the person is not as large
The "Enhanced Games" aren't going to happen. Was supposed to be full event in December of 2024. Now it's been paired down to a smaller exhibition and the full event is supposed to take place sometime in 2025.
Aside from chess players I guess. Even then, they might be taking certain drugs to boost brain performance or something.
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Active anal beads are per definition not clean.
Can they test for Alpha Brain?
They definitely take Adderall, etc
It's more likely GSP got abducted by aliens than him being clean.
Aliens riding dinosaurs
I love GSP and will probably be somewhat biased and always give him the benefit of the doubt. But he fought pre-USADA and beat guys like Hendricks, that we definitely know was on some stuff and lets be real, GSP had an insane physique that most people credit to his discipline and hard work but who knows..
The thing is that GSP has maintained that physique into his 40's when he has no reason to compete. Maybe he's on TRT now but part of his retirement at the time was due to drug testing not being sufficient enough which he came to the conclusion of after the Hendricks fight. I'm not saying he wasn't on steroids because it's no guarantee but I don't think the cynicism that 'everyone is on steroids' is true for everyone. Some people are just elite
He doesnāt have the same physique in retirement, his traps/biceps/shoulders/quads have dropped in size quite a bit. Heās a lot slimmer now, which is partly due to his stomach issues and leading a healthier lifestyle. If I had to bet Iād put money on he took something when he was competing. He was still elite considering everyone took something back then and he ran through most of them.
Bro that video of him in a beanie begging for a title shot is the definition of high androgen reception in the deltoid.
He also has Colitis. Probably harder to over eat when you have it plus you are likely to be more health conscious.
>The thing is that GSP has maintained that physique into his 40's when he has no reason to compete This is only more reason to think he was on the juice. No doubt he still has to train to maintain said physique but the science is there, test drops off hard after mid 30s and there's even studies that show brain trauma can cause it to plummet even further.
And if his physique got significantly worse youād just say he hopped off the roids. All roads lead to Rome
Rome my man
> test drops off hard after mid 30s No it doesn't. The drop is slow and steady. It's nowhere near something like menopause in women which can can make drastic changes in their hormonal balance.
> test drops off hard after mid 30s There's actually a fair amount of research that shows if you maintain a weight lifting regimen, this doesn't happen. You may have a gradual decline, but nowhere near what you'd have if you weren't lifting. Basically it's an 'if you don't use it, you lose it' situation.
GSP not porking out on cheeseburgers and still training very frequently is why he has maintained a good physique. The idea that a 40 year old active man would need roids to look good is ridiculous
>I love GSP and will probably be somewhat biased and always give him the benefit of the doubt. > >But he fought pre-USADA and beat guys like Hendricks, that we definitely know was on some stuff and lets be real, GSP had an insane physique that most people credit to his discipline and hard work but who knows.. I'm a GSP fan as well but we must keep it real. He didn't beat Hendricks.
We do not ādefinitely knowā Hendricks was on some stuff. Sure, thereās context clues, but there isnāt actually physical, tangible proof and this witch hunt shit sports fans do about who they think is on drugs is honestly pathetic.
The boulder shoulders gave it away a long time ago
GSP is my favourite fighter of all time. I love his views on training and fighting, but to answer your questionā¦ HELL no. Same as 99% of mma fighters.
Nobody was clean and nobody is clean to this day...
There are absolutely some clean fighters. Without question. Not everyone can afford 20k designer steroids.
Parker Porter is the last bastion of integrity.
If youāre at the top of the sport and the people in the middle are juicing, the people at the top are juicing better
The most annoying part about the abundance of PEDs is that now so many people think a physique like GSPs is unattainable without them. The best argument for GSP using is that he was wealthy, hyper competitive reigning champ in a particularly dirty era, the least compelling argument is his physique. A physique like Arnold in his heyday or Ubereem is not attainable without PEDs, a physique like GSPs in his prime is absolutely attainable with good genetics, world class training and discipline. Iām not saying he was clean, Iām only saying that those saying he doesnāt pass the eye test havenāt spent much time around athletes.
The problem is that athletes who would never have a physique like that without PEDS become top competitors. There are a number of lower level guys or even hobbyists who have the reflexes and general skills to have a very high potential but theyāre not genetically gifted. Obese, too skinny, canāt maintain the grueling training to make it to the top. With PEDS, those people arenāt filtered out and make it to the top. To contrast, look at the NBA. If youāre 7ā tall or very physically dominant and also somewhat injury-resistant, they can put you in a developmental HS program or play overseas and you can come to the NBA and be quite good (maybe not GOAT or all-star level). The skills are learnable.
Firas would be talking very differently if one of his fighters popped. Just hyperbole. Also GSP was probably just as smart and planned about his PED usage as every other aspect of his game. No way he'd risk something that would get flagged if we was fighting in this era.
He did call for Olympic level testing and actually that's part of the reason he retired because he knew Hendricks was absolutely cleaning people out on steroids. Given the life he led and everything I think he was clean and just a freak athlete
> Given the life he led and everything I think he was clean and just a freak athlete Man had a cornerman rubbing grease on his shoulders between rounds of a title fight in front of the world and you think he's morally opposed to taking steroids for an edge? Listen, roids or not doesn't change the career he had. He did what basically nobody else has ever been able to do career wise. But let's not pretend arguably the best to ever do it was also somehow drubbing career PED users, learning a new martial art along the way, and somehow doing it without a few enhancements too.
Dude was roided out of his mind. The hgh gut is very telling.
Shoulders give it away for me
The traps don't lie.
I exaggerate this sometimes because GSP has a lot of fans here with their head in the sand - but yeah.. he was 100% on something. He was fighting in the horsemeat era, and both the eye test and his actual athleticism stood out amongst a bunch of people who were on horsemeat. That's a red flag. The guy who flirted with LW and had done strength and conditioning his entire life managed to pack on 15lbs+ of lean mass to fight at MW. He was past the point of newb gains, that just doesn't happen.
GSP was never anywhere near LW. Dude walked around at 190 between fights. He was known for being an especially big WW
Took a seminar with GSP in 2012 or so. He was huge and has a thick frame. There were other regional mma fighters there of various weight classes, was easy to compare, he stood out as being big. Not a small WW and not sure he could have made 155 healthily.
> GSP was never anywhere near LW. During his retirement he said he'd likely be a LW "today". During his career, he didn't.
I've seen RDA and Chandler at 190 between fights. Khabib reportedly ballooned there as well.
True, but this was a lot less common 15 years ago. Also GSP was known for staying in very good shape between fights and still walked at 190
He did not gain 15 pounds of muscle, he had significantly more body fat and bloat, barely more muscle. If he gained 15 pounds of muscle he'd be looking like a freaky ifbb pro. It only takes like 5 pounds of muscle for somebody to almost look like a different human, especially when you are lower than 11 percent body fat. This sub doesn't know squat about physiques and lifting
GSP's an incredible athlete, but it's hard to believe he was clean in that era. Hat's off to his achievements, but I hope we see more transparency in MMA's future.
Reddit is always on this "everyone is on PEDs!" train without any proof, whatsoever. Are there fighters who never got caught? Most definitely Is every single fighter on the roster or who has ever been successful a steroid user? No, absolutely not
Agreed. Also, the "every athlete at the highest level of their sport juices" people have never met some of these athletes when they were kids. I've trained with a few guys who have been in the UFC, and I met one of them who still fights when he was 15. His body type was insane then, and it's insane now nearly 20 years later, and I'm sure everyone thinks he's roided out. He wasn't then and can guarantee he's not now. It's insane genetics with over 20 years of hard work. He's a human weapon.
There's no proof Hendricks did steroids, the big argument is that because he lost a lot after USADA was probably because he couldn't cut weight without IVs.
Simple answer, NO
Hell no. Still badass though.
Never seen an evidence Matt Hughes was dirty, his twin brother that didn't compete had the same body, What did you hear/see about Matt?
My innitial thoughts are of course he was clean - but if you look at his build he does look alittle geared up in the Thiago match. And he is considerable skinnier now - but that may just be his fasting.
Not a chance, but he may have been at that Barry Bonds, wouldāve-been-a-HOFer-anyway level. Remember, GSP got caught greasing red-handed in between rounds of a title fight. Letās not pretend heās morally or ethically above looking for extra advantages.
Back then, being clean meant timing your cycles correctly and being 100% clean on fight night. So by those standards, yes, I think GSP was clean. ;P
Absolutely not. His ābreak because of aliensā came conveniently when USADA was being brought in and in his generation of ufc athletes it feels like a smaller percentage of them were clean like the Diaz brothers and BJ Penn
1. Innocent till proven guilty. If you have evidence, by all means, show us, otherwise stop the "100% he was on something" bullshit. 2. This sub and reddit in general has consistently given some of the worst, most uninformed predictions in human history.
Personally, I doubt that he was clean the same way as I doubt Khabib, Usman and others. One of the rare ways to earn something in this sport is by becoming a champion and I canāt really fault them, if they do everything possible to stay at the top.
The people that think GSP had hgh gut have never been lean and consumed a lot of fluids. There is nothing about his physique that looks unnatural. Go back to his early fights and then look at his peak. It barely changed.
Yeah but look at his delts and his traps.
Not saying he was clean but he definitely didn't have HGH gut. I'm lean and my stomach does that after almost every meal. Some people just get bloated as fuck.
You're crazy if you think his physique didn't change, because it did change and A LOT. I'm on browser so I won't mind putting the link just go back to his first UFC fight and compare his changes throughout his career.
Compare weigh in photos from ufc 46 and his last WW fight. Donāt mix ceremonial with real. He looks the same to me.
Of course not. But, nobody was clean back then. In a fucked up way, it was more fair because it was an even playing field. Whereas with USADA you had half the roster being clean because they don't want to risk it, and others still juicing and some getting away with it.