ONE Championship has brought additional scrutiny upon itself by demanding former UFC fighter Will Chope delete a Facebook post criticizing its drug testing efforts.
A textbook case of the Streisand Effect has hit ONE Championship, after former UFC fighter Will Chope questioned plans for the promotion to utilize WADA drug testing standards moving forward. In short, news of the promotion’s plan broke earlier this year. Chope (38-15), who has been fighting in Asia since being released by the UFC in 2014 after a domestic violence controversy involving the fighter came to light, took the Facebook recently to air his own views on the promotion’s drug testing plan.
In a now-deleted posting, Chope wrote (via Bloody Elbow) that “Supposedly they will be doing tests according to WADA standards. That doesn’t mean WADA is doing them.”
Chope, who currently resides in Thailand, would go on to say that
It means their own officials will be doing the tests. Just. Like ONE hires their own refs, and judges for their shows….. It’s bullshit and biased. If ONE wants to ever get to the level of the UFC then they need a 3rd party to sanction their tests and shows….. But I doubt that will ever happen. ONE has an agenda. And as long as they are sanctioning themselves they can favor gyms and fighters.
I’m going to drop some inside knowledge and tell you the urine tests get sent to a lab in Taiwan. The doctor who tests these is a paid doctor that’s been working with ONE for years. Everyone knows ONE athletes are juiced. But this style of testing will allow ONE to hide results of guys they don’t want to be dirty and to throw guys that they don’t care about that are dirty under the bus. You can’t self-regulate privately and be non-biased and if you do self regulate it has to be public……. which it’s not! #F—kONE!
The posting brought an immediate response from ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong, who replied by saying:
“Thank you for your post, Will. I actually agree with most of what you wrote. There are some errors, but I am not here to create beef. Unfortunately, when ONE Championship was started in 2011, there were no referees, judges, doctors, sanctioning bodies, staff, etc for mixed martial arts in Asia. We had to find good people like Oliver Coste, Warren Wang, Rich Franklin, Matt Hune, Ryo Chonan, etc to help out (or Asian MMA would never have taken off again). On a related note, WADA has a network of certified WADA labs. Stay tuned for a big announcement as we officially roll out WADA testing through their labs. (We have been doing test runs since late last year). We are far from perfect and we have made a ton of mistakes. I agree with you 100% there. I am also sure we will make more mistakes because we are traveling in uncharted waters in most of Asia. That being said, I know everyone who works for ONE Championship is trying their best for Asian MMA. In any case, thank you for representing Asian MMA as the most active fighter in the world in combat sports. Your achievements are genuinely mind-boggling across MMA, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing, etc. Best wishes for continued success and happiness.
All well and good, right? Except, per Bloody Elbow’s report, Chope was later delivered a “demand letter” from ONE’s legal counsel, Yan Yan Lin. Said letter requested Chope delete his original Facebook post, which he has, citing the uncertainty around defending himself against a libel claim in Thailand.
“We don’t believe I can be sued under the US law, but in Thailand, the defamation laws are fickle,” Chope told Bloody Elbow. “Not worth the risk to leave the post up.” ONE’s decision to ignore CEO Sityodtong’s initial, more positive approach, however, will almost certainly ensure more people will be aware of Chope’s criticisms than would have been otherwise.
In a past interview with the Agence France-Presse in 2016, Sityodtong downplayed the risks of performance enhancing drugs in his organization, claiming that the culture of respect in Asia, and economic conditions, helped keep drugs out of the sport.
“As opposed to a sports culture in America where the marketing, the money, it’s everything. Martial arts culture is that you’re gonna be held accountable to your master, to your teacher, to your school,” Sityodtong said (via The Straits Times), at a time where ONE had already come under fire after a fighter died cutting weight. “It’s very different, and so the cultural implications are very, very different,” he added, then suggested Asian fighters in many cases couldn’t afford performance enhancing drugs.
ONE, of course, revamped their weight cutting policies in the wake of Yang Jian Bing‘s 2015 death. With a number of high profile signings, ONE’s drug testing policies are now front and center — which likely explains how quick they were to jump on Chope’s comments.
