Ben Rothwell had a negative experience with performance-enhancing substances and now he is trying to get fellow fighters to swear off of them for good.
Rothwell tested positive for an elevated level of testosterone after his August 2013 win over Brandon Vera. The heavyweight was given a nine-month suspension and told to clean up his act.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, I felt like I needed it (TRT),” Rothwell admitted on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I was getting endocrinologists and doctors who were like: ‘If you can do this, then you should. This is about your health. This isn’t about fighting, it’s going to help you.’ Things of that nature.
“And I was angry, because you can’t point the finger at anybody, but it’s obvious that [PEDs] have been running rampant in our sport. A lot of guys do it. And I really felt like, man, I’m at a disadvantage. I know these other guys are doing it. Who knows what’s going on, hormones are messed up, you start thinking crazy, like, I need to do this.”
Rothwell says that the issue is that fighters aren’t training like they are supposed to and then need drugs to stay in shape and in form to make their matches.
“I think a lot of guys resort to this stuff because of poor training,” Rothwell speculated. “They’re getting trained in the wrong ways. You hear about more injuries are becoming rampant. Of course they’re becoming rampant, because the testing has gotten better. Guys are like, ‘oh, I can’t take EPO anymore and have unlimited cardio, I’m going to have to come off this stuff.’ And all of a sudden there are all these injuries. Yeah, no kidding.
“A big day for me was the enhanced drug testing. That was when I became okay with everything. That’s when I knew I could win a title. I know I could beat anybody because these guys are going to get tested for EPO, growth hormone. Things that were really, really hard to detect before are now getting tested for. That scares the s**t out of a lot of people, I can assure you of that.”
