Do MMA fighters assume the risk of fighting steroid users?

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MMAPlaywright

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Remember Zach Arnold? He’s still periodically putting out articles. This one is about Mark Hunt’s lawsuit.

Judge in Mark Hunt’s lawsuit against UFC says doping is part of assuming the risk

By Zach Arnold | February 15, 2019

When Mark Hunt’s attorney was squawking in late 2016 about filing a racketeering lawsuit against UFC and Brock Lesnar in Nevada over Lesnar’s failed doping test, I warned that this was not necessarily a serious legal tactic. Racketeering was a marketing tactic and that’s about it. The threats over concealment and unjust enrichment along with breach of contract carried more substance.

Racketeering got the case in Federal court. If it lost out, it would likely move the case to state court.

The judge in the lawsuit telegraphed her skepticism in June of 2017. This week, the judge carried through on her remarks and dismissed every cause of action except breach of contract.

This was not a surprise. The surprise was in the legal logic to dismiss the case and what a bad, no-good, terrible ruling it is for those looking to employ legal strategies in the future against fighters caught doping.

Opening his own can of worms

Remember the circumstances of what went down. Mark Hunt fought Brock Lesnar while negotiations were going down to sell UFC. Hunt has his attorney go public with legal threats. Hunt follows through with legal threats.

Then, inexplicably, Hunt goes public in an interview supposedly claiming slurred speech and sleeping problemsdue to damage suffered as a fighter.

UFC promptly pulled Hunt from fighting in Australia. He loudly protested. How much did Mark Hunt hurt his legal case in America?

In dismissing a majority of the causes of actions, judge Jennifer Dorsey claimed that Brock Lesnar’s doping did not negate Mark Hunt’s consent to fight. In other words, he assumed the risk.

The judge cited a precedent involving a case regarding a player intentionally hit with a baseball. Yes, the baseball can be a deadly weapon, but it didn’t exceed “ordinary range” of activity.

You can argue that doping makes athletes bigger, faster, and stronger but somehow you can’t legally prove that it actually impacts “ordinary range” of physical activity during an MMA fight?

The whole point of doping is to impact your “ordinary range” of activity in a sport. You wouldn’t use drugs to not enhance your performance.

If this is the temperature in the legal system for tolerance of doping, attorneys looking to clean up the sport face an impossible task.
 

MMAPlaywright

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“Like that intentional throw, the fact that Lesnar was allegedly doping violated the bout rules established by UFC and the NAC but does not alone establish that his conduct exceeded the ordinary range of activity in an MMA fight,” Dorsey wrote. “As Hunt’s own allegations demonstrate, doping is an unfortunately common issue in MMA and was a risk he perceived. And although he argues that doping empowered Lesnar to move faster and hit harder, Hunt doesn’t allege that Lesnar’s conduct during the bout was somehow atypical—such as throwing Hunt out of the octagon or using ‘packed gloves’ or a weapon. Nor does Hunt claim that his injuries exceeded those typical of an MMA bout. Accordingly, I find that Hunt consented to his fight with Lesnar, which precludes civil-battery liability.”
 

Sheepdog

Protecting America from excessive stool loitering
Dec 1, 2015
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So that judgement is not fit for anyone to wipe their ass with, but this is a highly complex issue that a better judge could've properly explored to come to the same conclusion.

The problem is that anti-doping has always relied on arbitrary rules and a quasi-judicial enforcement process as a necessity. If anti-doping violations were subject to the same rules, procedures and standards of evidence that govern actual courts, you may as well not bother.

It might sound all well and good to use strict liability as a standard in anti-doping, but in civil or even criminal cases? That's not going to fly. They find a picogram of some bullshit substance that was in a tainted protein shake you drank and suddenly you're on the hook for millions? Nah.

I think in order to face damages a fair standard to apply would be that you would need to establish that the defendant intentionally took a substance for which there is scientific consensus that it enhances human physical capabilities beyond a normal range. But essentially that means it's impossible. It would keep doping enforcement where it always has been.