Middleweight Brad Tavares is the latest UFC athlete to receive a letterman jacket for 50 clean drug tests under the UFC’s Anti-Doping program.
Tavares (21-11), with the promotion for 16 years, has been through both the pre-USADA, USADA, and now CSAD era of drug testing in the UFC. 4,000 or so days in the program, as UFC Senior VP of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitzky said on Wednesday.
In the early days of the program, USADA “were showing up at my house every week,” Tavares said after receiving the accolade. That made the Hawaiian question “is this what life is going to be like now? This was in early 2016 I believe. And I was like ‘is this what life is going to be like now? Every week they just show up randomly at odd times?'”
As it turned out, Tavares test results were so consistent that the promotion’s drug testers ceased over-testing him. That, in turn, left him wondering when he’d actually hit 50 clean tests and get his recognition.
It finally arrived this week.
“This is cool. I’ll be honest, when they first told us back in 2015, I was all for it as far as having to face other clean athletes. You guys all know everybody that was on steroids and whatnot before.”
During Wednesday’s media day session ahead of his fight with Eryk Anders, Tavares also touched on the UFC traveling to his native Hawaii. Long story short, the veteran isn’t expecting to see it happen before his career comes to a close.
“I’ve always advocated and wanted UFC Hawaii, and there’s been like two times I feel like that the talks got close. But I came to the realization that it will never happen, in my career I don’t think anyway. If it ever does, I’ll stick around a little longer just to make sure I get one, but I don’t think it will happen.”
