Jake Paul and Nate Diaz will undergo strict VADA drug testing for their upcoming fight this summer after an heated back-and-forth on drug use, Mirror Fighting understands.
Both men have accused the other of offences related to doping in previous fights, despite neither having ever failed a drugs test under VADA, USADA or any local commission testing. But sources have confirmed to Mirror Fighting that both men will sign up to the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency, who will randomly check for any infractions before their August 5 bout.
Paul previously competed full VADA testing for his fight with Tommy Fury back in February, while Diaz underwent stringent random USADA checks as a UFC fighter for the last seven years. But that didn't stop either man from accusing the other of using performance enhancers in aggressive tweets this week.
It is a common implication from detractors to suggest that Paul's early-career wins over UFC legends like Tyron Woodley, Ben Askren or Anderson Silva were fuelled by steroids. But there has never been any evidence of that claim, and every publicly available test result he has turned in since beginning to box in 2018 has been negative.
Diaz took to Twitter to reinforce the claims last Friday, asking for the pair's eight-round bout to be pushed into a 12-rounder, which would be a major difference for both men; neither of whom have ever gone longer than 25 minutes in either boxing or MMA. "12 rounds," Diaz wrote in a post to his 2.2million followers last week. "Ur [sic] on steroids so let’s put that s*** to work."
Paul has hit back, noting that Diaz actually had issues with drug testing before that almost cost him his 2019 Madison Square Garden headliner with Jorge Masvidal. The fighter was almost immediately cleared of any wrongdoing by USADA when the atypical reading in one of his drug tests was traced back to a plant-based multivitamin.
In a response tweet, Paul told his rival: "You speaking to me Nathan? We haven’t forgotten that you tested positive for steroids. You and your boyfriend Connor [ Conor McGregor ] are juice heads. Let’s do 15 rounds and see how good those cannabis corroded lungs are. VADA going to be coming to Stockton to slap you up."
Diaz did not, as Paul claims, "test positive for steroids", but in fact had an atypical reading in an out-of-competition USADA test for traces of LGD-4033, or Ligandrol, a selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) which builds lean muscle mass, two weeks before his fight with Masvidal and was fully exonerated just days later.
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In a 2019 ruling by USADA, the UFC were permitted to reinstate fighters who have tested for less than 100 picograms/mL of certain substances, noting that you couldn't gain a competitive edge from such trace amounts that can get in your system as a result of taking a tainted supplement.
Diaz was said to have double-digit picograms in his system, which was said to mean he would need to have ingested 10,000 capsules of the multivitamin to gain any kind of performance-enhancing benefit. “There’s nothing guesswork about the Nate Diaz case," said Jeff Novitzky, UFC VP of Athlete Health and Performance, at the time.
"It is as rock solid evidence as I’ve ever seen in the history of my anti-doping career when it comes to a contaminant. To say he did anything wrong, you’d have to say, ‘You did something wrong by choosing a plant-based, vegan, organic multivitamin that said on the label they were lab tested.’ Somebody can say he did something wrong on that? It’s a shame if they would. The guy did nothing wrong.”
As for Paul's insinuation that Conor McGregor is a "juice head", there is no evidence that he has ever used steroids in the lead-up to a fight. He has passed every USADA test he has ever taken.
