Not only ONE Championship is making headlines for their newly found attempt to legitimatize the sport and even the playing field for all athletes. GLORY has announced several new policies to enhance their existing anti-doping program, to ensure that fighters competing are clean. The promotion has had in-competition testing for years but has now also rolled out a no-notice, out-of-competition testing program.
The promotion's rigorous testing has found many victims over the last years, most notably Alistair Overeem, Luis Tavares, Badr Hari, Mladen Brestovac, and Ariel Machado.
GLORY has hired Nadia Silk as the new Senior Vice President of Athlete Safety and Regulatory Affairs to ensure regulations are properly enforced. The US-based anti-doping lawyer and industry expert will oversee the project. Scott Rudmann had the following to say about her.
"I am delighted to announce the expansion of our anti-doping program and the hiring of Nadia Silk to ensure that all fighters are safe and compete on a level playing field. Nadia Silk comes to GLORY from her previous role at USADA where she developed and oversaw the anti-doping program of the UFC. She brings to GLORY a deep technical knowledge of the subject, real-world practical experience in the operations of advanced anti-doping programs, and vast experience in interacting with anti-doping organizations in jurisdictions around the globe. She is undoubtedly one of the top experts in anti-doping in combat sports in the world today. Having her on board with GLORY, in addition to enhancing our anti-doping program, moves us further along in our mission to protect the integrity of combat sports and solidifies our position as a world leader in the space."
The International Testing Agency will continue to conduct all drug testing and facilitate all of the promotion's samples in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Agency's regulations.
GLORY further will update and adjust their anti-doping rules, to be more in line with the frequent nature combat sports athletes compete. The World Anti-Doping Code is primarily directed toward Olympic sports with suspensions matching the four-year competition cycles. GLORY seeks to reduce those lengths to a more realistic standard for kickboxers.
Those changes include GLORY's ability to now overturn a win to a loss for fighters testing positive. Previously fights were only overturned into no-contests. Going forward GLORY will have authority to impose financial sanctions, such as fining athletes for their entire fight purse. Heavy punishment and surely, a big determent to play by the rules.
In an additional effort to guide transparency, GLORY will publicly announce all anti-doping suspensions and maintain a public database of each fighters's testing history on glorykickboxing.com/anti-doping-program. This list includes both in-competition and out-of-competition samples.
The program started in April this year, and so far 14 athletes have been tested, with more pending since the database has not been updated to account for last weekend's GLORY 87. The most tested fighter has been interim GLORY Heavyweight champion Tariq Osaro with three tests so far.
