The UFC has announced a new partnership to continue its anti-doping program after ending an eight-year association with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), and the hiring of a new key figure.
Beginning in January 2024, Drug Free Sport International will run the Las Vegas-based MMA promotion’s anti-doping program, the promotion announced Thursday. Serving as the new independent administrator of the UFC’s anti-doping program will be former FBI agent George Piro.
Find out more details about Piro below.
Jeff Novitzky announces hiring of Piro
At a news conference Thursday, UFC senior vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky, along with executive vice president and chief business officer Hunter Campbell, announced the hiring of Piro, and gave a glowing review of his resume.
“I want to introduce, not in person here today but to the UFC world, the independent administrator of the UFC’s new and improved anti-doping program, George Piro,” Novitzky said. “When you talk about George Piro, you’re talking about an individual with the highest level of integrity and credibility you can possibly imagine. While I had a noticeable federal law enforcement career, my resume pales in comparison to that of George Piro. And as I talk about George Piro, he’s quite literally an American hero.
“He just recently retired as the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Miami, Florida. He previously was the assistant director of the international operations division at FBI headquarters. He was the supervisor of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force. He’s also a world champion no-gi jiu-jitsu masters level. He knows the sport. He knows what the athletes go through from his world-class level training.”
UFC has hired George Piro, who was the Lead Interrogator of the Saddam Hussein Interrogation Team, to head its new drug testing program.
"You're talking about an individual with the highest level of integrity and credibility."
Full video: https://t.co/r1D3mlMb8S pic.twitter.com/mV3ankeiUy
— MMA Junkie (@MMAJunkie) October 13, 2023
Piro is a champion-level BJJ competitor and avid MMA fan
According to Novitzky, Piro is a huge fan of MMA who has not missed a single UFC pay-per-view event since the promotion began. As a competitor, he has honed his jiu-jitsu skills on the mats at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Fla., one of the best gyms in the world that is home to many high-level MMA athletes.
Check out video of Piro on the mats and in competition below:
Piro was solely responsbile for interrogating Saddam Hussein
Piro became an FBI agent in 1999. Piro was the lone FBI agent who interrogated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after his capture by the U.S. in 2003. As one of the few FBI agents fluent in Arabic, he was able to gain confidence in Hussein.
In a 2008 appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Piro detailed his experience interrogating Hussein, including how he worked to gain his trust by becoming his only provider of basic necessities. Through their conversations, Hussein confirmed to Piro that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, denied links to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, while also bragging about outsmarting U.S. efforts for his capture.
Expectations of Piro's new role in the UFC anti-doping program
Novitzsky: “George will make every – and I stress every – final decision in the program. That authority will be his and his alone. We will surround him with experts, the likes of Dr. (Dan) Eichner, so that George has every resource at his disposal to make the right call every single time.”
“George is not going to be waking up fighters in the middle of the night that have two hours left of sleep before a championship match like what happened to (Alexander) Volkanovanski in Abu Dhabi. George is not going to be attempting to collect urine samples like USADA did from Paulo Costa at 6 a.m. in Salt Lake City as he’s wrapped under blankets trying to lose the last couple of pounds and probably hasn’t ingested any fluid for 12, 18 hours. George isn’t going to make testing decisions like we’ve seen of athletes who have lost a fight, retired in the octagon, had been tested pre-bout, and then wanted to be blood tested post-bout, after they’ve announced their retirement. So, you would think, knowing the sport, common sense, very basic decisions that it seems like time after time we’ve seen. George has too much knowledge and respect of the sport to be making decisions like that, and he’ll be an immediate improvement right off the bat in terms of someone who’s intimately familiar with what these athletes are doing and going through.”
Campbell: “George is going to be the person that’s going to determine who gets tested, with what frequency, when – that’s completely in his control. We have no control over that. He’ll work in coordination with Drug Free Sport, who will go out there and do the athlete collections. He’ll monitor it. He’ll make sure, again, the requirements that we set forth for Drug Free Sport and the group in rebuilding the program are two-fold.”
