Jose Aldo had a press conference. No, I don’t know why but mmafighting.com had video of it. He talked about a lot of stuff – Reebok, McGregor, etc… Journalists can milk this thing for all kinds of content. Most interesting was his blunt intention to keep using an IV to rehydrate himself after a weight cut.
“As an athlete, it’s hard to not use IV because that’s the best way to rehydrate. They came here saying oral rehydration is better, but I don’t know how they came up with that. Any sick people that go to a hospital, the first thing they do is an IV.”
The main reason IV use is banned isn’t necessarily for weight-cutting reasons. Rather, USADA, WADA – all the big ADAs – claim that the use of a saline IV bag can mask some PEDs and that some athletes were using them as a way to delay giving a blood sample. Like, apparently guys literally saw the drug testers coming, slapped a saline bag on their arm, and were all, “oh, uh, give me a minute or 15 here, ok?” (Credit where it’s due to the MMA Hour who interviewed the USADA guy – this was before we launched, ok? Otherwise obviously we would’ve had the scoop first.) In theory, a guy can ask for an exemption in order to use one. Or, if you’re Jose Aldo, you just say, “HAHA! TRY AND CATCH ME!”
“I will continue to do IV, I don’t care. I’ll tell them I’m going to eat and do it instead. They won’t take me out of the f
ucking fight, so I don’t care … Only if they put security guard with me 24 hours a day. I don’t care. That’s what’s going to happen.”
He’s not even wrong in a lot of what he says. How do you know if someone used one? Have a guy just following him around? Test his blood for … water.
“I will do it anyway, or someone else will do it for me. I will go to a friend’s house, to a different hotel room. I don’t f
ucking care about them. They won’t take me out of the fight anyway. They can’t take me from the fight. It’s not doping. They will say they will test me. How are they going to get IV rehydration from my urine, brother? Only if they got new techniques. They are ninjas. They are fucking stupid.”
Again, he has a point. They could just have someone follow guys around for a few hours after the weigh-ins. There will come a point when using the IV isn’t going to be the best idea because it’ll be five hours before the fight and you should probably be warming up. Do we now have them literally inspecting every inch of a guy’s body for a needle prick?
“They can say whatever they want, but it’s scientifically proved the best way to rehydrate.”
Jose Aldo is an avid reader of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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