USADA says ‘technical issue’ led to disappearance of recent Brock Lesnar test sample

Last week, we got what appeared to be some shenanigans from USADA involving former UFC heavyweight champion and current WWE star Brock Lesnar where we saw the disappearance of one of his test samples.

Obviously, this was a bit concerning as Lesnar has a history with performance-enhancing drugs and is currently being tested in the hopes of returning to likely face current champion Daniel Cormier at some point early next year.

However, according to USADA it was nothing more than a mistake.

“USADA updates the Athlete Test History page of the UFC/USADA website on a weekly basis,” stated USADA spokesperson Adam Woullard (via ESPN). “During an update on the week of October 15, we experienced a technical issue that resulted in the information on the page being displayed incorrectly.

“The correct test history for the athlete is one test [that week], not two. The issue has been fixed and the testing numbers on the website are all accurate. We are still investigating the specific technical issue that led to the error.”

Originally the reported samples from that week were two, meaning that the error would have been that the site added an additional one that did not exist.

In regards to more of the specifics of it all, UFC Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitsky spoke on the matter as well.

“I have access to a more specific database than the public, which displays the date a sample is collected, what type of sample it is and what the results are as soon as they are available,” said Novitsky. “The public website, as I understand it, indicated there had been two tests during this last quarter, and it recently dropped to one. I have always seen one test in this quarter for Lesnar. It was a urine test and it came back negative.

“This program has a limited amount of resources and funding. It would be great to test everybody every week, but that would cost millions and millions of dollars. To put it in a nutshell, I have all the confidence in the world USADA is allocating these testing resources appropriately.”

Lesnar is currently acting as the WWE Universal champion but thanks to his new contract, he is allowed to take a fight within the UFC. Whether or not that will end up happening remains to be determined.

on 12/11/2018