This guy is our future. And he's been here for 5, 6 years. Since he was there, at the belt, competing and representing our country out there. What's up guys, Derek Marpley, TomorrowDates.com. Today we're going to be talking about Paolo Costa's physique and if I think it was naturally achieved and if it wasn't, what I think in particular he's taking to skirt the drug test.
UFC to maintain that body composition and that that crazy athletic muscular and simultaneously lean physique so Paolo Costa posted a recent physique update he's been vlogging actually which is pretty entertaining to follow along and he's been posting tons of progress shots along the way as well as keeping us updated with his weight and the most recent video he posted shows his current conditioning at still above 200 pounds so these shots of him are still above 200 pounds the guy has over 15 pounds to cut and the fight's coming up quick but he's actually ahead of schedule believe it or not compared to where he normally is and this is what he looked like two days ago here just looking shredded as hell and ready to go so he's gonna down a lot more To get to one... I just noticed this comment. I'm not gay, but goddamn, he looks fine as hell. Damn, how the fuck is he a middleweight crying face?
So anyway, everyone knows he sucks down to 185. He barely makes 185. And then he super compensates back up to like 210 plus. At one of his last fights, he super compensated back up to 213 and a half the day after weigh-in, which is just absolutely insane. So this guy comes in glycogen loaded at almost 215 pounds shredded to fight guys who are... barely cutting to 185 like they're cutting but not to the degree he is most of the time unless he's fighting uh well no one cuts the amount he does this guy you know strips a significant amount of weight off his frame to just get under the weight limit by a hair and then blows up within 24 hours so before we dig into the pharmacology and the ways this guy could circumvent testing and all of the evidence that suggests what he may or may not be doing and the compounds you of choice i'm going to dig into the very beginning we go all the way back to ufc the ultimate fighter brazil season three this is where paulo burst onto the scene as a ultimate fighter contestant and in his first fight he actually had to fight and win to get into the house so this is where we see his physique for the first time at age 22 way back at ufc brazil 3 or the ultimate fighter brazil season 3. So Paolo bursts into the ring, he's ready to go, he's hyped up, and he looks jacked.
And does he look significantly different than he does now in current day? Not really. He still looks pretty damn jacked, and notice one of the first comments Vanderlei makes as he bursts in is, he looks better than his pictures.
so there's this one picture that commonly circulates as a before image supposedly of costa and this is it this is what he looks like before the ultimate fighter everyone sees this soft ass pic where he has his abs glazed over he's holding a bunch of extra fat and he looks very uh you know less in shape what you have to consider though about this shot is this is shortly before the ultimate fighter brazil season three so when he takes this image we don't know what he weighs here when he's fighting in the ultimate fighter brazil season 3 he's cutting to make that 185 weight class in each fight now he only fights a couple times when he's in the house the entry level fight and then he fights one more time but he has to cut to 185 whereas in this picture who knows what he weighs but again does that necessarily mean this wasn't off cycle or you know even on cycle and just bulking you know that's what we're going to get into later but it should be noted that this picture is what van der ley is referring to when he says he looks better in his picture this is not long before this exact same time frame where he shows up looking jacked you will see a new champion so paulo is already jacked and in shape in this season he is only 22 years old here now what kind of incentive would he have to not be juicing going into the ultimate fighter Brazil season three like do you really think these guys who are trying to win their way into the house aren't going to be Taking gear. What is the probability of that? That is what I that's the first thing that I think anybody should be asking here He looks like he already has like 80 to 90 of the muscle he has now already back then at 22 years old vanderley mentions how he looks better than his pictures and this to me is reflective of the way he bulks up and cuts down or you know perhaps he was just fat but i think the more likely scenario is that he's been bulking and cutting for a while and also reinforces the bodybuilding angle that we're going to get into a sec because apparently paulo was not you know formally trained as a fighter he was just coming in as a guy who wanted to be a champion but not as a seasoned vet of fighting or anything like that. Rather, he came in as a bodybuilder. And this is what Chael Sonnen mentions on a recent post he made on YouTube.
He says how Paulo self-proclaimed titled himself as a bodybuilder prior to entering the house for The Ultimate Fighter Brazil Season 3. When Paulo walks out, I got the same thing in front of me that Vandele has, which is a stack of papers with resumes. A guy's name, his weight, his height, his age, his hometown, his attributes, and there were some very impressive ones. And we had guys on there that were 9-0 or they were an amateur champion. There's something in Brazil that's very good.
Jungle Fight that Waleed Ismail puts on and really does a good job of identifying and crowning stars from that part of the region that go on. There was a bunch of guys. Jungle fight champions and jungle fight veterans.
Really impressive resumes because when we got to Paulo's bodybuilder, that's what it said, bodybuilder. So he walks into the room and the guy looks like he's carved out of stone. He looks like he looks now, but he has bleach blonde hair. So there Chael says, the guy comes in with no, you know, credentials of fighting and he is titled as a bodybuilder.
Now, this is a more accurate representation of what he looked like on the show. Now, does he look significantly different than he does now? Like, frankly, he's almost as muscular.
So he came into the house as a bodybuilder. He's almost as jacked as he is now at only 22 years old. And what is the probability that as a guy who is not being tested going into a house where you have to rip a guy's head off to try and prove yourself to make it into this house? Why would you not do everything in your power to... enhance your performance if you're a bodybuilder what are the chances you're not already using gear to begin with i know this is kind of a no you can't extrapolate any kind of significant data from this but there was a study done in 2014 showing that over 20 percent of brazilian bodybuilders are using anabolic androgenic steroids the anabolic androgenic steroid prevalence use was 20.6 percent mostly young men almost 100 percent of them about 81 percent consumed deca, winstroll, sustenon, and blah blah.
Obviously this is not a, you know, super indicative study of anything, but it's worth noting that anabolic steroid use is very common among Brazilian bodybuilders, and for somebody who is going into a house where he has to literally tear guys apart, and he's trying to be as jacked as humanly possible and enhance his performance as much as humanly possible. and he's already a bodybuilder to begin with who has experience bulking and cutting bulking and cutting and gaining muscle do you really think he wouldn't have been on gear going into the house i think that is very unlikely you have no incentive to not be to be honest and he almost has all the muscle he has now so to me that was the first red flag in itself that he was likely on performance dancing drugs way back at 22 years old entering the ultimate fighter brazil season three so he still bulks and cuts to this day to get as much muscle in his frame to squeeze into the middleweight division and to be as much of a tank as possible and he was actually over 250 pounds this offseason he's continuously pushing the limit for what he can squeeze into the weight class he hasn't gained a lot of muscle since 22 years old but he basically you know like he's obviously trying to squeeze as much as he can out of it and still remain at that weight cut so this time in this offseason he got up to over 250. it's because paulo is 250 and has to get down to 185 60 pounds I think by like the summer it's like three months four months I see so like they just said Paulo has a significant amount of weight to drop he had to lose over 65 pounds to make weight for the middleweight division this time around this is what he looked like in the offseason at his peak bulk fucking mass kind of a dirty bulk to some extent but here he is just like peak bulk mode here and showing off just you know how much i guess tissue he can put on during the off season look all these pictures are all when he's down to that weight he right now is huge but by the way he's still he Right now, he still has a six-pack. He's still in shape.
He's just, it's like someone put a bicycle pump in him and just like pumped him up. So, he's never really fat. Like, even if you look at this picture of him bulked up, yeah, he's, you know, holding a lot of extra body fat that he doesn't need, but it's not like he's like obese or anything.
The guy is just doing a dirty bulk, essentially, from what it looks like. And some of it's probably unnecessary weight, yes, but the fact that he bulks up to over 65 pounds over his weight limit... that he is literally gets down to every single time just goes to show he's very very well versed in the bulk and cut mindset and sort of harks back to the bodybuilder days that you would expect from a guy who is knows how to aggressively bulk and how to aggressively cut and obviously fighters know how to aggressively cut but it's not often that you see guys who have a 185 weight cut and walk around at 220 plus bulking up to almost 260 pounds to gain as much muscle as they can nor would they even be able to pack on as much muscle as Paolo so the fact that he was already this muscle bound as a 22 year old for the most part a guy who's being untested and fighting against these guys in the house to like I said get his way in show what he's worth there's no reason he wouldn't be juicing and I think the bodybuilder angle just further reinforces that because most bodybuilders that give a shit are going to be cranking their minds out In addition to that, guys on certain exogenous hormones will typically have more water weight than they, than what a natural guy would have, that they can temporarily cut because the compounds they use supersaturate the muscles with glycogen, water, nitrogen, etc., which may also be why he can cut weight so drastically year after year, but maintain some semblance of endurance. That's just not common for guys as muscle bound as he is.
And yeah, he gases out, but it used to be much worse, which we see in the show. So over the years obviously his cardio has gotten much better which obviously reinforces how hard he works but it may also imply PEDs as he seems to have significantly improved his conditioning than he had at the start of his career in the Ultimate Fighter despite also packing on probably a bit more muscle still even though he was already like well over what a natural I would think would look like in those circumstances now if you go to episode 7 Paolo admits himself that he is very vain and does what he can Whatever he can to make himself look better and you can see him literally doing things like only a bodybuilder would do like Literally in the house shaving his chest and just doing stuff that Bodybuilders do to look as shredded as possible So here he is literally shaving his eyebrows shaving his chest. He's talking about how vain he is.
He likes to groom himself, etc And here he is chilling fully fresh shaved all glazed up tanned Fucking dyed hair looking like a saucy. Uh, I don't know. Um love island contestants or something and um cranked like he looks great and he looks almost as good as he does now despite being uh at a point in his career where he was untested and had all the motivation in the world to sauce just like he does now and the ufc even posted this back in 2014 but they say they go over his uh vanity stuff again So later in the 7th episode, Paolo says himself way back at, like this is his early 20s before he is even in the UFC, keep that in mind, even before he fought in several fights pre-UFC, he mentions how making weight is extremely hard for him even at that size he weighed in at 184.9 on the dot for his second fight on the ultimate fighter so you can see here this is him fully depleted down to one 84.9 he mentions how he used to compete at a higher weight class and now he is sucking down to middleweight and it's harder for him to make weight than it is to actually fight which this is all the way back then this guy has this much muscle mass and again all the incentive in the world to juice his mind out without being tested and as a bodybuilder the likelihood who's also competing in a high performance sport what is the likelihood that he's not taking advantage of that i would think he'd fully leverage that to the fullest capacity especially at this uh amateur level where you have no reason to not so something i thought was pretty cool too is how uh shogun actually was in this season and he mentions how these guys will be fighting for titles in six years which is almost on the dot exactly what's happening right now So there he mentions how they'll be fighting for titles in six years and be representing Brazil which is honestly a crazy coincidence considering Paulo was about to do just that in almost that exact time frame. Now moving into the fight itself Paulo does some uh pretty I guess irresponsible maneuvers that gas him out way too quickly and his fighting style is actually totally difference in this season where he's deploying a ton of grappling and trying to bring guys down to the mat get submissions with chokes and he wears himself out with like heavy duty guillotine attempts and he ends up gassing himself out in this fight to the point that he's literally like collapsing and falling on the floor i'm so funny and this fight style is totally uncharacteristic of him where normally he's just standing and brawling and it seems like he sort of changes fighting style over the years to the point where now he is a strategic striker and i guess it's not really that strategic some people would argue he's just a brawler who you know just brute forces his way to victories which is i can see where they're coming from to be honest but his cardio is significantly better than it was back here he basically blasts out his entire energy reserves during the first round the second round he's a get he's basically gassing out and by the third round he's a shell of a man who can't even do a takedown without falling on his face and getting kicked all these down he ends up losing this fight and this is his only loss and while it doesn't show up on his actual record because he wasn't a professional fighter at this time you can see it when you go to his wikipedia page he has 13 wins no losses but at the bottom you see exhibition record breakdown you mauricio alexandra jr decision split so here he basically lost and lost his opportunity to win the Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3 because of his, I guess, poor performance. Because he basically underrepresented himself significantly.
He was gassing out hard, trying to go for chokes that he shouldn't have. And his fight style is totally uncharacteristic of what it's like now. And it's actually very interesting to watch. And I recommend you do if you're a fan of him whatsoever. Moving forward to after the Ultimate Fighter, he had five fights in leagues that have no notable testing.
parameters whatsoever they you know drug testing might as well have been encouraged by how lax they are he had three fights in jungle fight jungle fight 84 jungle fight 87 and jungle fight 90 and one thing that's notable about jungle fight is it was untested until 2015 everyone knows when usada came into the picture in the ufc around a similar time frame they started getting really tight on testing and jungle fight started to deploy testing themselves too back in 2015 however the parameters via the ufc already have holes in it so for a league like jungle fight which has a way smaller budget and actually doesn't seem to give a at all about testing people and it's just doing it for the public eye it's essentially irrelevant like here you see a notable character wall lead ismail which is somebody that comes up often because he's paulo costa's manager and right is right by his side in almost every single video and he is in this article titled brazilian mma promoters are trying to clean up the sport but still have a long way to go and this is february 6 2015 notable paulo's fights and jungle fight are 2015 december and then in 2016 after this has been enacted so you could you know argue okay maybe he was enhanced for the ultimate fighter brazil um and for his first five fights in these random leagues that no one really talks about but then jungle fight which is a bit more notable you know the testing is in place however when you actually read through the article what you see is that waleed tells the interviewer that two fighters will be randomly selected to do the test after every event starting on march 28th and he will do it even though he expects to lose a lot of money with it and again remember waleed ismail is paulo costa's manager now currently so he's in this article talking about how he's deciding if testing is being enacted or not and how it's going to be done and how much it costs and why he does or does not want to do it so he's in control of if these tests happen or not and now he just so happens to be paulo costa's right hand man manager that's with him in every single video in addition to that you can see paulo hanging out with brazil's president jer bolsnarro in this image here back uh march 16th so paulo has been uh tight with the president literally like very very high up people in brazil that would otherwise be uh favorable to be connected with from a performance enhancing drug uh testing context so in the same article that i mentioned somebody named isaac pele said many fighters believe they will be clean on fight night and take a chance so a lot of these guys in jungle fight are still taking gear despite knowing there's random tests now but when you actually go through this like the strictness of the testing is laughable it's basically there as a way to say we're testing people now but there's no you know actual high level scrutiny occurring here and the tests are easily something you could circumvent with very very common practices for circumventing testing which are things that you would not be able to get away with in the ufc but you could easily get away with here they don't even want to spend the money on it so you can just imagine the rudimentary basic tests are probably just getting gcms testing for basic metabolite screenings and letting people get away with six to one testosterone to epi testosterone ratios and doing the cookie cutter that these natural bodybuilding leagues are doing and whatnot which are incredibly easy to get around which we're going to get into later and one thing to note too before we get into further details is if paulo is willing to bend the rules so much that he used an iv during his rise in the ufc he's gotten around uh he's had you know false flags for testing positive for things and gotten little fines here and there um and he looks like he's sauced out of his mind do you really think and this is like with usada on his ass he's still using i he used an iv he did all these things that were kind of questionable and he was taking big risks do you really think if he's willing to do that in the ufc that's tested as strict as it is do you really think he wouldn't have been juicing as a former bodybuilder fighting in leagues that self-admittedly don't even want to pay for drug testing and has the majority of their fighters more than likely using gear like i think from the beginning you in the ultimate fighter coming in as a bodybuilder the likelihood is extremely high he's on gear and he looks like he's on gear he maintains the same physique thereafter throughout all of his entry level fights and then going into the jungle fights he maintains the same physique and you know starts to even grow throughout his career like you can see his uh his body composition seems to only improve as the years go by like maybe not significantly it's not that much different but it definitely doesn't regress to the point where a time where he would very likely be enhanced at the start when he's an amateur and he can get away with it as a bodybuilder versus when he's being you know super strictly tested and he would have otherwise regressed but he didn't regress at all and if anything just improved slightly more do you think that's not a huge red flag for that he's still potentially using gear that would be you know something i would uh explore pretty thoroughly as a potential scenario so connor mcgregor also outlined something interesting about the usada testing parameters that i want to dig into quick so he mentioned in a article back when usada first came into the picture how the drug testing system makes it easier for fighters like jose aldo to cheat and he talks about brazilians specifically in this article and he basically says the ufc are taking great steps to clean the sport and it's phenomenal what they're doing but it's still a flawed system the irish sports council were hired by usada to come and test me irish people are coming to test me so if they're coming to test me then the same people who are testing jose are the brazilian commission the same people who ask him for selfies who train in the gym who will look the other way when the piss test gets thrown over the shoulder i feel like they'd have to send an american from usada or wherever you sat is based to go to that country and do it themselves you can't hire in someone from over there you can walk into a chemist in brazil and pick steroids up it's part of the culture that's just the way they are that's just the way life is over there you can walk into the chemist and say i'd like a little bit more on that points to bicep and the chemist will go we've got just what you need from that and give you something just like that legal it's not looked down upon it's just the way of life over there i still think just think it's a flawed system but i don't care you can you can't put them peds on the chin and i'm going for the chin so connor mentioned that back in 2015 before his fight in uh ufc 194 more recently you would think that this has been fixed where you don't have usada outsourcing who they're getting to test guys but just a couple weeks ago connor actually got tested on the middle of in the middle of his vacation on his yacht apparently so here september 11 2020 what's going on here ufc usada just arrived to my yacht this morning for testing i've retired guys but go on then i'll allow them to test me it's all natural here baby forever and always god bless 180 kilometers across the mediterranean sea tomorrow let's go and then here you can see the test they have for him and uh you can see down here it says the united states anti-doping agency has authorized clear idiom as and its agents to conduct doping controls on usada's behalf so again it's not usada performing these tests still rather it's some company that is being outsourced that is local so if you go look up clear idiom they are not located in the us they're not a part of usada they are a company that is outsourced to get the testing done in that country rather than usada coming randomly themselves and doing it so this means that brazilians are likely still being tested by the brazilian commission just like Conor mentioned in his original article back in 2015. So the same loophole would still present itself where hypothetically you might have some guy showing up who's a fan of Costa. He's literally friends with the president of Brazil. His right-hand man is literally the head guy who promotes the professional fighting leagues in Brazil. So he's tight with the president himself who... I'm sure there's some sort of influence over the Brazilian commission who would be coming to test him on behalf of USADA and not USADA themselves.
So you could argue off the bat that these samples could just get tampered with entirely and, you know, thrown over the shoulder like Conor said. Now Costa was only tested twice for the entire first six months of the year because of COVID as well, which is basically a green light for a lot of athletes to use PEDs, which we saw a lot of significant transformations this year. And that easily could have been the case with Costa. Now again...
his body composition doesn't significantly change year to year so the fact that he hasn't regressed since his amateur bodybuilder days where he was likely saucing his mind out to me implies that he's probably doing the same thing rather than saucing harder um and he's still making weight so i highly doubt he would crank harder than he otherwise normally would because that would push him over his weight limit so he's probably not pushing the boundaries too hard on what he's using rather he is using what he needs to sustain what he built as a amateur bodybuilder back in the day in his early early 20s late teens potentially so again it's entirely possible that the samples could just get tampered with which would give unlimited leeway to use whatever you want or give you a bigger window of time to clear fast acting suspension based compounds out of your system and just plan the pharmacokinetics of what you're using a bit better than you would otherwise get with a new sada official rep showing up and testing you on the spot and not being biased whatsoever but we're just let's just assume that the brazilian commission showing up to fight to uh test costa is not influenced by um the president of brazil or the head uh promoter or the number one fighter in the country let's just assume that all of that is irrelevant right now and he's getting tested properly can he still beat the test yes he can in my opinion and there are a lot of fighters doing that yes i believe they are so fighters will be required to update usada of their whereabouts at all times and there's a three strike policy where if a fighter is not where he says and he misses a drug test it counts as a strike after three strikes in 12 months it's treated the same as a failure you're allowed to miss tests which means if you put that you're in a certain place but you're not which you would think would be a lot easier in brazil with guys coming who are hired in brazil that aren't even you saturday to come test you and in the middle of covid when no one's doing fucking anything and is even allowed to leave where they're quarantined most of the time you know what's the likelihood that you're not going to get away with whatever you're trying to do and even if you were being tested properly you're allowed to miss tests before they you know if you get a third missed test that's the only time it would actually become publicly disclosed that you failed other than that you could get away with you know failing uh you could have two missed tests every year and never have anyone know about it which is just insane there's a lot of speculation as to how lenient this actually is and some people think the rest a lot of people are proposing that they give you a 30-day notice if you miss your test and all you have to do is explain why you missed it and they'll book a retest and if you don't show again you get another 30 day notice by which you need to tell them why you missed it again and this all remains private until you have a third no-show where you would then get you know classifies as a positive test result by default for not showing for three tests but there's plenty of loopholes it seems like where you can essentially be on PEDs and just you know claim you're not there when you might in fact be there because you know you have a certain amount of uh strikes before you basically actually um hit your three strike roll and then for that year you basically exhausted all your all your free passes essentially so now sometimes you can get tested multiple times in one week and some people claim that uh and obviously i don't know how truthful this is but some people claim it goes as intensely as people hiding under the rings at their gym you know going under their way to hide when usada shows up and then pretending they're not there supposedly john jones was hiding under his ring at his gym to not give a sample one time and none of that gets publicized because as long as you don't get three strikes you haven't breached the rules essentially so costa may or may not be doing that or just may not uh have a guy who's even testing him strict and buy the book whatsoever because it's the brazilian commission who may easily be influenced by his stardom or the uh president's influence or whatever and that is sort of uh just the general speculation around some of the obvious things with his use and we're going to get into the actual pharmacology shortly now another thing that is notable is how paulo sustained an injury that is more common for anabolic steroid abusing bodybuilders to have happened this was something that happened late 2019 um costa underwent surgery on his left bicep in early october basically he had a partial bicep tear and he had to pull out of his fight and some people were speculating about you know it's more likely to happen to anabolic steroid abusing individuals which is technically true i suppose there's one study in particular that is often referenced called ruptured tendons and anabolic androgenic steroid users a cross-sectional cohort study and here the conclusion was that anabolic androgenic steroid abusers as compared to otherwise similar bodybuilders showed a markedly increased risk of tendon ruptures particularly upper body tendon rupture and this is because even if you are gaining muscle at a substantial rate and strength your tendons and joints don't grow and accommodate that increased strength at the same rate so you otherwise could have this massive super physiological increase in muscle size and strength but it's not like your tendons are necessarily going to keep up at the same pace and it then puts you in a more vulnerable position for injury than a normal person would otherwise have because they're not as strong and as jacked as you so it's uh you know certainly plausible to at least put on the table that this is an injury that is more common to happen to hormone abusing bodybuilders i don't read too much into this one but it was worth noting nonetheless as paulo is a self-proclaimed former bodybuilder you And clearly his physique was built from bodybuilding training in his early 20s. And even if he only took steroids as a bodybuilder prior to his fight career, the literature clearly shows that super physiological use of anabolic androgenic steroids will bank up myonuclei that can give you a lifelong performance enhancing advantage that would otherwise not be possible with normal endogenous testosterone levels. So theoretically, he could have just juiced his brains out before entering the UFC and retained. some performance enhancing advantages of natural thereafter that he otherwise wouldn't have had as a lifetime natural and this is reinforced in the study published in january of 2019 skeletal muscles do not undergo apoptosis during either atrophy or programmed cell death revisiting the myonuclear domain hypothesis and then here they basically elaborate on how a muscle can gain myonuclei and never loses it ever for the entirety of your life The new data states the discovery that myonuclei are retained indefinitely emphasizes the importance of exercise in early life during adolescence.
Muscle growth is enhanced by hormones, nutrition, and a robust pool of stem cells, making it an ideal period for individuals to bank myonuclei that can be drawn upon to remain active in old age. So essentially what it means is that if you take advantage of high endogenous androgen levels in your youth, you can create a bank of myonuclei that you can then draw off of later in life when gaining muscle would be harder. than it would otherwise be when you were 21 years old and had peak natural test levels.
But the same principle extends to exogenous steroid use as a user could create a bank of myonuclei that would otherwise be impossible to produce as a natural and then reap performance enhancing benefits from that myonuclei bank throughout their life, even years after they've discontinued performance enhancing drug use. So the reason why this is also worth mentioning about the injury to go circling back to the bicep tear. is that Kosa tried to use a fake doctor to clear him to fight when he wasn't ready to fight, which also reinforces the fact that he's willing to bend the rules.
on top of his banned IV usage, which we're going to get into shortly. So in this article, Dana White says Paolo Costa tried to use fake doctor to get cleared to fight sooner, according to UFC president Dana White, who spoke to gathered media ahead of UFC 248 this week. At one point, Costa attempted to use a fake doctor to provide medical clearance so he could take the fight against Adesanya instead of Romero. I respect him and I respect the fact he wants to fight, White said.
I'm ready. I'm ready. No, you're not. You're not a doctor. And he got some guy who's his buddy or something to say he's okay.
No, that's not how this works. I don't want to push him and make him hurt himself again. Take your time. You're getting in a fight. The fight is going to happen.
Don't worry about it. When he's healthy and a doctor calls me and tells me, not his friend from Brazil, when a doctor calls me and tells me that he's healthy, we'll make this fight. This is the fight to make. This is the fight that I want to see.
And I guarantee you, when that fight happens, you'll hear me going crazy about that one. So to me, fake doctor. you know lying about iv uses there's a lot of red flags his physique itself doesn't pass the eye test and we're still going to delve into the pharmacology and this is you know already considering all the facts i've laid out to begin with so as far as testing for certain hormones at this point what can you say how to pick up on it what can't they so there's still plenty of abandoned substances that didn't pass kind of clinical trials with some anabolic properties that won't be picked up via gas chromatography with mass spectrometry as it's not what they're looking for they only have the list available to them of what they know what to test for as well as the metabolites you know what to test for so hypothetically you could obviously have some sort of designer steroid that's always a possibility the likelihood of that i'm going to say is relatively low though let's just assume that he doesn't have some designer chemist who's making some designer anabolic androgenic story we've never heard of so paulo has a lot of supplements he uses and he actually seems to know a fair bit about them which is notable in my opinion because it sort of elucidates his potential education about the pharmacology side of things. So he goes on to explain the reason why he uses each one.
He has a fucking shit ton of them here. And he basically has a 20 minute video. dedicated to explaining all the different supplements he takes and he has even takes even more than i do which is a lot so one thing that is very notable though too is he talks about quote unquote special supplements given to him made just for him from dr lucas penchel via his brand dna supplements So here he shows the special supplements that were made just for him by this doctor and they're called DNA supplements now the first thing you should know about DNA supplements and this brand is that well here's the site it's uh Linha premium and you can see all their products and whatnot and you know it looks legit it looks like an actual you know legitimate supplement brand and that's fine but what you should know is they are not certified nsf sport products which are the only supplements that the ufc will actually vouch for this these are the supplements that the ufc backs and says are certified by the ufc that aren't contaminated and are safe to use so paulo is also basically admitting on camera that he uses supplement brands that are not nsf certified for sport which is notable above and beyond that if you look up dr lucas pencil you get a bit of uh information that is very coincidental and interesting so dr lucas pencil is the same doctor that usada gave a two-year sanction to for a violation of the ufc anti-doping policy resulting from his complicity in the administration and use of over limit iv infusions of permitted substances on june 2nd 2017 and november 3rd 2017 by carlos costa and paulo costa respectively during its investigation you sat and learned that dr pencil recommended and prescribed the 2017 prohibited iv infusions the ufc adp applies to the athlete support personnel who are directly working with treating or assisting any ufc athlete in a professional or sport related capacity this includes without limitation acting as a manager coach trainer second corner man agents or medical personnel so keep in mind that doctor is the one who signed off on this and prescribed whatever Whatever, he prescribed it to Costa. And he's the same one making his specialty supplements right now, current day, three years later. And also keep in mind, Paolo admitted to IV use only after being caught and exposed.
And he claimed he didn't know it was against the rules. Which obviously you would as a UFC fighter, and so would the doctor. So circling back to USADA testing for synthetic anabolics and metabolites.
So they are aware of certain ones, which they have a pretty extensive list. And if you go through the USADA prohibited list, you can see, you know, all the anabolic agents that they are aware of. And then obviously there's all the metabolites of these agents and whatnot.
And it's pretty comprehensive. now obviously there's some chance that he may be using designer compounds that aren't on this list but if there's a positive test result over their threshold for a synthetic anabolic androgenic steroid or its metabolites they will confirm it through additional analysis using sensitive isotope ratio mass spectrometry so initially they just use gas chromatography with mass spectrometry to detect if you are clearing a certain threshold which is pretty low for synthetic anabolic steroids so you know things like master on things like prima bull and things like trend balloon etc as well as their metabolites. So there's very little leeway unless you know how to plan the pharmacokinetic profile of these short-acting compounds to ensure they're clear out of your system in time with the synthetics.
And unless you have some crazy designer chemist getting some shit made for you, you have little leeway when it comes to synthetics. One thing they don't test for that's notable though is DNP and other compounds that you could leverage for aggressive fat loss or improve your insulin sensitivity. Now with the likelihood that he used something like DNP to help his cut, I don't know for sure, to be honest, but it's worth noting that it's not on the tested list. And it's one of the most potent fat burning agents ever.
And you can rebound very, very significantly after its use. And it's very, it's often used for aggressive fat loss phases and rebounding aggressively after a fat loss phase as well. So, you know, theoretically could have used this to help them strip the 65 pounds off in four to five months, which, you know, if you're a natural, that's a fucking shit ton to lose.
especially without losing any muscle. Like, can you imagine losing 65 pounds as a natural and not losing any muscle tissue naturally? It'd be fucking impossible.
So to me, that's a huge red flag in itself too, that the guy goes from 255 down to 185 and then super compensates back up to 213, 214 and loses no muscle in the process. The guy keeps everything despite training, not even like a bodybuilder. He trains like a UFC fighter because that's what his sport is now.
So he's doing like endurance work is doing crazy, uh, long muscle stripping fucking sessions of MMA. And yet he's keeping every ounce of muscle tissue on his frame as he ripped 65 pounds off himself. Like what is the chance that you can do that naturally and retain all your mass? It's fucking low. So something he might leverage to his fast acting insulin and GH because they're difficult to test for with their short detection times.
And they're also bioidentical endogenous hormones. So that's worth noting the likelihood of that, you know, who knows for sure. But it's worth noting nonetheless, as they're not going to be things that are easily detected if you know how to plan the pharmacokinetic profiles of them. And even if they're in your system to some extent, the likelihood that they're going to get picked up on certain endogenous bioidentical hormones, even if a test detects them, if they're within a certain threshold, you're going to get away with it still. So that's worth noting.
In addition to that, something that is not tested by WADA yet that probably should be added to their... Testing list is Milano tan 2. So this is something that most people know as the tanning peptide. And I've talked about this many times before. It's also labeled as the Barbie drug.
And I've used this in the past to go from a pale pasty guy to a dark. You would not even believe that I'd be able to get this tan because I otherwise I'm not able to. So.
Now, something that is not commonly known about Milano TAN2, aside from the obvious, it makes you more tanned, is its ability to drive up your hematology profile. So if you've ever looked at your blood work before and after Milano TAN2 usage, what it actually does is it helps drive up hemoglobin production, red blood cell count, hematocrit. This is going to give you a similar performance enhancing advantage to something like EPO. Is it going to be the same extent of EPO? No, but it's something that is not even on.
What is fucking banned test list? And you can get away with using as much as you want, drive up your hematology profile and increase your endurance substantially. Now, Costa is naturally tanned as far as I can tell.
And in addition to that, you're not going to get more tanned with Milano 10 use unless you have a UV exposure concurrently. So it's not like him being tanned or not is indicative of his use of it or not, but it is worth noting nonetheless that that may be a compound he's deploying to help drive his endurance up. That. I would not be surprised if many MMA fighters are also utilizing themselves to help drive up hemoglobin levels. Now, does he look like he uses PEDs?
Yes, we already know that. We've established that. He's a former bodybuilder.
He also walks around at fucking 220+. Like, when he's shredded and depleted at 205 within a week of the fight, he shreds all the water weight off, and then he super compensates back up to fucking 213 pounds. Like, historically, he will step in the ring shredded and glycogen loaded. And this article in 2019 outlined his UFC 240 weight so he cut down to um let's see waiting at 186 on friday and rehydrated to 213.8 pounds on saturday so he steps on in the ufc ring at 214 pounds shredded and glycogen loaded he walks around at a comfortable and lean 225 to 230 probably so does that sound like the amount of lean muscle mass you could hold on to as a fighter who literally trains for endurance No, there's no fucking way you could do that, dude, in my opinion. So he steps in the ring, weighing almost 215, shredded to the, like, literally the most shredded guy in the UFC, basically, and jacked while being full as fuck at the same time.
He trains for a sport that would otherwise strip muscle off his frame, especially with the amount of weight he needs to cut, and yet he retains all of his muscle while he cuts 65 pounds off his body, like an enhanced bodybuilder. So he not only doesn't pass the eye test, but... he has a lot of leeway because of the other things I mentioned previously, as well as the ability to get around testosterone to epitestosterone ratio testing, which we're going to get into soon. But one thing you have to keep in mind too, is just because he's passed tests, it doesn't mean you're clean, which I'm going to delve into exactly why there's a lot of compounds, like I mentioned, that aren't being tested for above and beyond that.
If you know how to plan the pharmacokinetic profiles of what you're using and it's fast acting enough, like a suspension of some sort, you can get out of your system in time or short acting orals are obviously used a lot by guys in the UFC, cough, cough, turinable. But are there smarter ways to do it? In my opinion, yes.
And I think he's probably deploying some of these smarter methods, which we're going to get into soon. So do you need to look like you're on gear to be on gear? No, you don't. So this guy not only looks like he's cranked out of his mind, but there's guys in the UFC that get popped for gear after you said it was. enacted and came into the picture that don't look like they took gear so for example anderson silva failed for master on 2015 he failed for methyl testosterone 2017 but his physique never looked significantly different than what he looked like at his previous fights in fact you might even say his physique regressed over the years and here he is at ufc 183 here he is in the fight here he is in the fight and keep in mind this guy is sauced here this guy is tested positive for steroids you So the rest of his career, does he look any better in these fights than he did earlier in his career or other times of his career where he supposedly was clean and natural?
No. So does that mean he was saucing his entire career? Potentially. On top of that, it basically exemplifies that there are lots of fighters in the UFC that are using steroids that don't look like they take steroids.
Frankly, maybe 90 to 99% of guys who take steroids don't even look like they take steroids. You wouldn't even bet they do. Like that study said, 20% of bodybuilders in Brazil are using steroids. I bet you the majority of them don't even look like bodybuilders, but yet they still take it.
And that's just genetic response as well as your training style. So Costa is obviously a genetic elite and a hyper responder. And he can probably step on stage as a amateur bodybuilder and do pretty well if he really put his mind to it.
And that's. Fucking why he was a bodybuilder before and why he took gear probably. And then obviously to enhance his performance going into the ultimate fighter house.
But there are guys in the UFC that are testing positive for gear who don't look like they took gear. So the fact that people are defending, you know, a guy who looks the most sauced of all. not being on gear versus guys who don't look like they're on sauce and take care like what's the likelihood of that i would say very unlikely costa is the most jacked guy in the entire ufc and there's guys who look way worse than him who are on sauce and he's the one who's clean i think that's pretty unlikely in my opinion in addition to that too and i don't want to be a dick but it's something that should be noted nonetheless is his hair has taken a beating this past year and androgenic alopecia is obviously expedited by exogenous anabolic serotonin and here he is may 21st with significant diffuse thinning again may 21st you can see the scalp through the sweaty hair coming strong unfortunately for him so the androgenic alopecia has really uh taken a stranglehold of him lately and here he is during a training session here you can see it clear as day in the video as well He talked too much about my absence He left me on the train and now he's on the train And I'm back, I want to see 50 I'm going to prepare a surprise so that's something i unfortunately had to point out but he is closing on in on 30 but still the amount of diffuse thinning he's experienced over the past year is worth noting because that is one of the flagship side effects of anabolic energetic steroid use and obviously we're not going to get any kind of commentary from the ufc elaborating on the uh you you know false positives and shit like that that's going on so we can do our own speculation which we're going to get into soon as well so like i mentioned already there's guys in the ufc that don't look like they're on gear who take gear we already know that we've seen proof of this many times there are a huge number of ufc fighters that publicly state with confidence that paulo is on gear as well one of them is uriah hall um So far I've been hearing a lot of negative things from a lot of Brazilians from him. I don't really know him. I know he's young.
I know he's hungry. I definitely know he's under juice. But he's just... Also Israel Adesanya. I know what it's like in certain countries where...
money talks where if you flash your gun people act a certain way i know what it's like so adesanya goes on to elaborate on some of the points i brought up earlier about the brazilian commission and how there might be some potential leniency in regards to how uh they treat paulo because of his connections and whatnot and in addition to that he talks about um how he believes he's on the gear i'm gonna pop him before you sign up officer so i'm gonna beat him and then when he gets caught by you started down the line you're like yup i still work his ass even when he was on steroids derek brunson also elaborated in a more succinct statement what he thinks about costa on twitter in 2017 he said look at and then he has a injection symbol um boy so basically implying look at steroid boy a year ago you have my promise will kick your arse if my title path the tour's easy money you're a fraud he's basically just out costa saying he's a juice head essentially um there are a lot of other ufc fighters and people in the sport who accuse him of gear including and something that's really uh interesting too is the test result that got costa initially um kicked off the card to fight Yoel Romero so Yoel initially claimed Costa failed a drug test before their fight that was supposed to happen and then pulled back that statement as he said he only heard it so Ariel Hawani clarified this in his own uh tweet shortly thereafter where he said that Yoel Romero called me immediately after the show to clarify that he had only heard that Paolo Costa failed a USADA drug test but he is not sure if that is accurate at this time he said he would never want to accuse anyone before the facts come out. This was March 11th, 2019, before the Romero and Costa fight. So Costa was booked to headline UFC Fort Lauderdale against Yoel Romero, but his subsequent removal from the April 27th card was never really explained. And Yoel told ESPN that he had been informed. Costa pulled from the card.
got pulled from the car because of a USADA drug test that came back with a positive result. And at the time, Costa and his manager, Waleed Ismail, denied ever using a banned substance, but declined to clarify the reason why he was out of the fight. And a month later, Costa told Brazilian website Combate that a stomach medication he used in 2017 forced him out of the UFC Fort Lauderdale main event. Now, this was never announced by USADA or anyone.
This is just what Costa came out and said, and no one ever confirmed that. And if you go look at a... The article in MMAfighting.com, UFC's Palo Costa fined by NYSAC for undisclosed violation, says it was for a quote-unquote stomach medication.
It's notable that there's a lot of speculation around if an athlete wants to get out of a positive test result, they may have some leeway to claim that they unknowingly took a tainted supplement, even if they know that's not the case. And if it unknowingly, quote-unquote, contains banned substances. they can get let off the hook with a fine instead of a suspension. And this is what Paolo is speculated to have done here by many.
And when asked if the stomach medication, Placil, is the reason why Costa was under investigation, Lee Park, a spokesperson for the commission's parent governmental body, responded that, quote unquote, evidence received and reviewed by the commission conclusively show that Mr. Costa failed to comply with the commission rules and policies regarding the use and disclosure of non-performance enhancing substances while licensed. So that obviously isn't a good enough answer for the public to know exactly what happened. And Costa saying, I got kicked out because I didn't say I took a stomach medication.
Like, how do we know for sure that's what happened? Also notable, Firas Zahabi, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, who was George St. Pierre's main coach, also said he thinks that Paolo is probably on steroids. But for me, the biggest evidence that he might be on steroids.
for me the biggest evidence that he's on steroids is if you look at his past performances he didn't look super strong he didn't look super explosive he didn't have incredible cardio and then and he's fighting lower level opponents then he gets to ufc and he goes on this incredible streak where he looks more powerful more endurance more he looks more muscular like if you're doing mma eight hours a day you don't add muscle on unless you're using a substance that's just the truth you know that's that's just the reality of it all you If you're using substances, you can train eight hours a day and add muscle. If you're not using substances, it's very hard to add muscle on when you're doing so much aerobic and anaerobic work. So, look, if I were to tell you, no, there's no way he's on steroids, I'd be lying.
I'm telling you right now, I think the man is very likely, very possibly on steroids, especially after reading that headline. If he's taunting Adesanya, saying, hey, Brazil, you know, because of COVID, for those who don't know, because of COVID right now, I bet USADA has taken a break, okay? They haven't really been coming around as much.
maybe polo cost has taken uh that as a as a green light for him to do any substance he wants who knows i didn't read the full article maybe he's just kidding around but he has been flagged for taking ivs which is illegal and he knows he knows it's illegal okay guys with that said give me your thoughts on this fight i want to hear your comments and questions on this fight and then i'm gonna keep this moving on he destroyed johnny hendrix oh the irony that's from liam devin well yeah that was a very very impressive fight costa has an unnatural body you can't get a body like that without doing steroids that's from mma predictions i would tend to agree with you i would tend to agree that most people cannot get a body like that but for me that's not the the telltale reason for me it's more has to do with his past performances some people also criticized costa's body language when asked about peds and interviews which I guess is notable as well. Like this, you know, obviously it's not conclusively proving anything, but the amount they're shaking their head, the amount they're diverting, the amount they're justifying his natural status. It just seems kind of, you know, I don't know. Seems a bit iffy. And if you go to the comments section, there's tons of guys.
Let's see. TRT Vitor resurrected. Hmm. Crossed arms when accused of steroids.
I thought he was on roids the minute he stepped in the octagon. Look at how fidgety both of them got when questioned about steroids. these clowns are showing signs of guilt awkward pause awkward fake over the top laugh man's on steroids no doubt haha the dual crossed arms after they lied is a huge tell he is juicy lol at 225 paulo says johnny hendrix is the one i've just fought right his reaction suggests he's on the juice laugh my ass off the body language though and i agree the body language is a pretty big tell by both of them they did a pretty poor job in this part of coming across as naturally like brushing it off now one thing i want to dig into is john jones because his testosterone epi testosterone ratio is what we're going to use to exemplify the pharmacology side of this that is ultimately going to be what i think paulo is using so jones failed multiple times and basically got let off the hook with a one-year suspension because he claims he accidentally took some pills that somebody gave him for you know pills and as a fighter would you risk using some random underground and not use pharma-grade PDE5 inhibitors for your dick?
Obviously not. He tested positive for turenin metabolites before UFC 214, and they still deemed it unintentional, despite the fact that you're basically, supposedly, it seems like you're allowed to basically dodge tests several times, and it sounds like a lot of rumors speculate that that's exactly what he did, and you can clear certain fast-acting compounds out of your system very quickly, but after a very thorough investigation, quote-unquote, an independent arbitrator concluded that Jones was not cheating intentionally and handed him a suspension for, or... 18 months he then tested positive again before ufc 232 for the same metabolite that got him in trouble before ufc 214 and as per the scientists involved in the investigation jones did not re-ingest any bad substances at this time a trace amount of metabolite was still lingering in his body and continued to do so for some time and vada collected the urine sample from jones on the weigh-in day before ufc 232 and found that he had 33 picograms of the metabolite M3 in his system.
Unlike the first two times, Jones did not get any suspension as he was supposedly innocent as per the commissions. Now, apart from the synthetic anabolic androgenic steroids, which are a lot more obvious to detect, Jones notably had an abnormal testosterone to epi testosterone ratio at the start of 2015. So in this article, it outlines his test results and how they are supposedly a sign of not doping. So Jones ratio of testosterone to epi testosterone, In three tests were 0.29 to 1, 0.35 to 1, and 0.19 to 1. The normal ratio for an African-American male is 1.31 to 1. For Caucasian and Hispanic men, it's about 1 to 1, and for Asians, it's about 0.7 to 1. So basically what this ratio is, is it's showing how much testosterone you produce, and epitestosterone is essentially a metabolite that is created endogenously in your body and you otherwise maintain a pretty normal physiological logic ratio of about one to one for most people. And this is something they use to catch people using bioidentical hormones, namely testosterone.
So basically if you have an elevated testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, it would otherwise indicate that you're probably using exogenous testosterone because why would you have a elevated level? So the problem with this is the amount of leeway they have. So the threshold back then was six to one. which is extremely lenient and has since been reduced to four to one, which is still lenient, which I will explain in detail why later. But the notable thing here is if you were using exogenous testosterone, your testosterone to epitestosterone ratio would likely be high.
And this is where, you know, like Overeem got popped for having a testosterone to epitestosterone ratio of like 14 to one or something. Chael Sutton got popped for a super high one as well. This would indicate exogenous testosterone use.
If you had a super low testosterone to epitestosterone ratio. That wouldn't indicate exogenous testosterone use likely. Rather, it would indicate that you're using a synthetic anabolic androgenic steroid that's suppressing your endogenous testosterone production, suppressing your HPTA, which is why you would have such a low testosterone to epitesosterone ratio.
Because otherwise, why would you be producing such a little amount of testosterone? It would make no sense. And the amount of testosterone a natural male produces is about 600, 650. On average, about 613 nanograms per deciliter. In the three tests given to Jones, Not only did he have the low testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, which indicates testosterone suppression, he had testosterone levels of 180 nanograms per deciliter, 59 nanograms per deciliter, and 49 nanograms per deciliter. And those are the levels of a dying 90-year-old, essentially, or somebody who's using exogenous anabolic androgenic steroids without question.
So it is pretty obvious to me that Jones has intentionally sauced numerous times, in my opinion. And the suppressed, significantly suppressed endogenous testosterone levels are a red flag, as well as the epi testosterone to testosterone ratio. And even though they supposedly, well, they did do carbon isotope ratio testing to see if he used testosterone or not, it doesn't fucking matter because they weren't testing for synthetic anabolic androgenic steroids.
Basically, what happens is if you have a abnormal testosterone to epi testosterone ratio test result, what they then deploy is something called isotope ratio mass spectrometry. And this specifically examines the isotopes of carbon 12 and 13 in most cases for figuring out if the testosterone is naturally produced via animal derived, you know, like human derived testosterone via steroidogenesis from cholesterol, or if it is from an external source like plant tissue, because this is where testosterone is typically made from is from Mexican yam. So if further testing, didn't find that it came from a plant source.
And in fact, it was human derived, which it did. And, you know, Jones was supposedly cleared because his carbon isotope ratio test showed that his testosterone is from actual humans. It doesn't fucking matter because the thing we want to test for when you're shut down is not for testosterone. Like, yeah, we still want to test for it because maybe you used tests and you just cleared it out of your system in time.
So we might as well check if you have plant tissue derived fucking testosterone in your system too. But... The main thing is likely a fast acting compound like Terenable that would clear to your system in a fast acting time or something else that would otherwise suppress your HPTA and result in you getting a fucking super low testosterone to epitestosterone ratio or have your endogenous testosterone production get crushed into the ground.
Like there's no other explanation why a top tier athlete with perfect fucking like. a championship athlete with insane genetics would have a fucking 49 nanogram per deciliter test level it's just unheard of so he would never have become a champion if that was his actual level and he was using something to suppress it not intentionally but he was using something to enhance his performance that had a negative feedback on his hpta that shut him down and that is what was indicated by these test results and it's just people who Don't know any better that just think, oh, you got the carbon isotope ratio test and he passed. So there we go. He's clean. Like, no, actually, it just fucking shows further when we see his testosterone levels that he, in fact, was definitely doing something.
And it must have been pretty significant because if you are using a DHT derivative or a testosterone derivative that clears out of your system very quickly and isn't even a substrate for aromatase, what is the likelihood that it's going to shut you down to that degree? It's not unless you're using a fucking shit ton of it. So.
This is just a slap in the face to the public, in my opinion, that this was a well-known fucking fact and no one even addressed it. So the question then arises is if you can get away with a four to one ratio of testosterone to epitesosterone, they're not even testing for the presence of testosterone because they can't differentiate between bioidentical endogenous produced testosterone and Mexican yam derived testosterone that you're injecting. internally that's why they have to deploy this ratio test to see if you're outside of the genetic outliers that might otherwise produce a four to one ratio which is like unheard of because most people are one to one but if you happen to you know fall into that uh category of individuals who has more than a four to one ratio naturally which is fucking nobody then they subsequently test you with carbon isotope ratio testing to make sure that your testosterone is in fact um derived from human-based cholesterol So the question is, couldn't you just administer a bunch of epi testosterone to inflate your ratio in parallel with your testosterone use to just keep your ratio one to one, just use as much testosterone as you want.
And that's what they used to do back in the day until they started testing for epi testosterone. If you look at some of the common tests done in athletes and natural leagues and whatnot, they will have it noted as masking agents in brackets, and they test it via gas chromatography, mass spectrometry to figure out if you're below or above a certain threshold, and the threshold is very low. So they are going to pop you if you're using epitestosterone. So you don't really have the leeway to just take a bunch of epitestosterone to be able to use as much test as you want. That's not how it works, even though you know, on paper, I could see why somebody would speculate that.
So they're going to be able to detect an abnormal presence of epitestosterone. So it's only this amount of leeway you have a four to one essentially that you have performance enhancing uh leniency in so this is where we get into how much testosterone can you use and still fall within the four to one cutoff first of all if you're using a suspension-based testosterone with no ester it's cleared out of your system extremely quickly so even if somebody shows up randomly to test you if you're microdosing test suspension you're probably not going to get popped because you're not going to be outside of the four to one threshold i'm going to show you just how significant of leeway you actually have so the usada you know threshold and the ufc cutoff used to be six to one back when jones first um had that abnormal test result it was actually six to one when he had that super low test result which is ridiculously lenient now it's four to one in current times and one thing i wanted to show you that you're probably gonna be shocked at if you haven't seen me talk about before is the effect of short-term use of testosterone and muscular strength and power in healthy young men and how much testosterone you can actually use and still fall within the four to one cutoff. What a lot of people don't realize and what is fucking insane is you can get away with upwards of three to three and a half milligrams per kilogram of testosterone and not trip this ratio cutoff.
And frankly, you could probably get away with a lot more if you're using a short acting ester. or no ester at all, ideally. And this is how athletes are circumventing drug tests and using testosterone without getting caught.
So here we can see the use of testosterone and anathate has been shown to significantly increase strength within six to 12 weeks of administration. However, it is unclear if the ergogenic benefits are evident in less than six weeks. Testosterone and anathate, if you don't know, is an esterified testosterone that has a half-life of roughly, ballpark five to seven days-ish. So this is a long-acting testosterone that, um...
is often used in testosterone replacement therapy. It's often used by bodybuilders to reduce the frequency of administration needed because it's meant to stay in your system for a long time. So this is literally a study done to assess if somebody could get away with using a super physiological amount of testosterone and still fall within WADA's imposed urinary testosterone to epitestosterone ratio of four to one, even on a long acting ester, which no sane fighter would ever use. So 16 healthy young men were matched paired and were assigned randomly in a double blind manner to either a testosterone and antheid or placebo group. All subjects perform a heavy resistance training program while receiving either test E at 3.5 milligrams per kilogram, which is approximately 300 milligrams per week, which is a fucking lot.
That's a significant advantage over somebody who normally naturally would only otherwise produce about 50 milligrams of no ester tests. Like naturally you're only going to produce like five to six milligrams a day. per week if you're a genetic fucking elite you produce at most 70 milligrams and that's still following a diurnal rhythm where you would otherwise only have you know maybe a thousand nanograms for a handful of hours throughout the day and the rest of the day it's you know it's dipped down to 600 700 and um if you have a bad night of sleep if you have a night of drinking if you have a bad diet that day if you do anything fucking wrong whatsoever your test levels are going to be in the gutter on that day whereas if you're using 300 milligrams of test e your levels are literally artificially left at above super physiological levels, no matter how shitty your lifestyle is, no matter how hard your training is, no matter how hard and aggressively you're weight cutting, losing 65 pounds in four months, no matter what you're doing, you're maintaining all your muscle tissue because you have this amount of testosterone always stable in your system.
So 300 milligrams is a shit ton for a MMA athlete that would otherwise have to deal with the diurnal rhythm of testosterone, the suppression caused by... I'm weight cutting. the suppression caused by heavy duty cns fucking fatigue the suppression caused by high levels of stress and the lack of antagonism of glucocorticoid receptors that you would otherwise get with exogenous testosterone use that you're not going to get to as significant of a degree with your natural test levels that have anti-catabolic properties all of these things you're just not going to get the ridiculously enhanced muscle protein synthesis all this shit 300 milligrams is a shit ton So let's just keep that in mind right now that you're naturally only going to produce 50 to 60 milligrams a week if you're lucky, and that's still not maintained on a chronic level throughout the day. So it's way more than you produce naturally.
So some of these guys are getting 3.5 milligrams per kilogram. So what'd they find at the end of it? Despite the clear ergogenic effects of testosterone and anthe in as little as three weeks, four of the nine subjects in the testosterone and anthe group did not test positive to testosterone under the current WADA urinary testosterone to epitestosterone ratio criteria.
So that means almost 50% of the subjects use 300 milligrams a week almost, or roughly, which is a fucking lot of a long ester that takes weeks to clear out of your system fully and still did not pop on the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio that is currently deployed in the UFC. The UFC still uses this four to one ratio that is outlined in this study. And almost 50% of the athletes did not test positive. So that means half of these athletes would have been cleared to fight and not tested positive while using 300 milligrams of a long acting testosterone. So this is something that has a half-life of five to seven days, plus which takes upwards of fucking, like it takes five half-lives for a compound to fully clear out of your system to the point that it may not be detectable.
So you can just imagine, let's just say somebody is using testosterone suspension, which is in and out of your system in hours, you can get away 300 milligrams a week using enanthate. Half of them can. So imagine if you're using suspension, I would automatically assume that 100% of them can probably get away with it. And above and beyond that, you might even be able to get away with even more tests because you have no ester attached to it. Your full clearance time is like fucking hours.
And even if they test you randomly and showed up, the likelihood you're gonna be outside this ratio when you're using that fast acting of a compound is fucking low. So there's a significant amount of leeway to use bioidentical testosterone right now. And above and beyond that, It's only once you clear this four to one testosterone to epi testosterone ratio that you would subsequently be tested using carbon isotope ratio testing, which would then try to determine if the testosterone you're using is derived from plant tissue or if it is endogenously produced via steroidogenesis from cholesterol.
So you're not even going to get publicized that you popped on this ratio until you had subsequent testing for carbon isotope ratio. testing that you fail as well. But the likelihood that you're ever gonna get there to begin with is low because you have so much fucking leeway with this giant ratio. Remember, most people have a one-to-one ratio.
This is four-to-one, guys. You can get away 300 milligrams of test E per week. 50% of them can, almost. 300 milligrams a week of a long-acting ester.
So something that is in and out of your system in hours. I could have literally done a fucking shot right before a USADA representative showed up. done the test and probably still cleared it and been within this cutoff because that's how fast acting no ester test is or even a short ester test potentially and this is how much leeway i actually have it's fucking insane now hypothetically costa could also get animal-based cholesterol himself have a chemist react it down to testosterone and have an unlimited supply of testosterone that he could then use that would always pass the carbon isotope ratio test even if he cleared the four to one cutoff Because at the end of the day, if you clear this cutoff, if you get, you know, let's just say 4.1 to 1, and then you get subsequently tested with carbon isotope ratio testing, if you had testosterone that wasn't derived from plant tissue, and in fact, was derived from animal based cholesterol and reacted down by a master chemist, you couldn't theoretically have a passable testosterone that you can use at any dose you want and still pass the carbon isotope ratio test and nobody bats an eye at you. How likely is it that he's doing that?
I don't know for sure, but it's certainly if anyone was to be looking at that to deploy, I would imagine it'd be the highest level of the UFC. So that is certainly on the table. But at the very least, you likely have at least 300 milligrams a week of cutoff room, in my opinion, of a very fast acting version of testosterone with no ester attached.
Probably even more because we're talking about fucking test E here that almost 50% of the athletes still didn't pop for. So if we have testosterone suspension administered on a daily basis, the amount of performance and acting benefit you can get out of that you can probably use several hundred milligrams a week still be well within this cutoff even if you were tested randomly by a guy even if he wasn't a biased brazilian zillion commission hired guy and it was literally a random usada rep who showed up you could probably be tested whenever the fuck you want still fall within this ratio and be comfortable getting tested at any time despite having shot testosterone like fucking few hours prior to your training session and above and beyond that there are genetic outliers with polymorphisms that can actually cause altered testosterone to epi testosterone ratios that may otherwise present a scenario in which an individual has even more leeway to use even more testosterone because they otherwise have a lower ratio than a natural athlete would normally like some guys are simply going to metabolize hormones differently and some guys are going to have lower testosterone to epi testosterone ratios and guys with certain genetic polymorphisms you know it's not very hard to get genetic testing done assess your genome look at your polymorphisms now and figure out you If you're an outlier who may have even more leeway to fuck with this shit and get your blood work done and see all this stuff to assess exactly what's going on and assess with reasonable accuracy how likely it is that you're going to be able to get around the use out of testing, even if it is super random and some random guy who wasn't a Brazilian commission outsourced employee came to test you randomly. You could easily with confidence go into tests knowing that you're a genetic outlier. that can get away with hundreds of milligrams per week and not have an issue and even if you weren't a genetic outlier you can still do it with a test suspension or even a test propionate i would bet so my guess is at the very least he took a fair bit of gear before the start of his career as a bodybuilder personally i think he's still probably leveraging bioidentity bioidentical testosterone maybe fat burning assistance via compounds not on the um doping list as well may deploy melanotan to drive up his hematology profile a tad and that's not saying that that's a commonly deployed tactic but it's like why the wouldn't you do that as it's not on the banned substance list so why the not but the main thing would be the bioidentical testosterone and perhaps maybe even having a animal-based cholesterol-derived testosterone to ensure that even if he tripped the testosterone to epi-tesosterone ratio, it would clear as a non-synthetic as he'd still get by without any publication of steroid use because it would show that it was, you know, quote-unquote human-derived testosterone, even though it was fucking reacted down in a chemistry lab.
So I think the likelihood is higher that he's leveraging this loophole in exogenous testosterone detection rather than... Using some random designer anabolic androgenic steroid that isn't on the banned substance list or, you know, micro dosing some fast acting synthetic anabolic that stands out like a sore thumb using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. And frankly, if I had an athlete in the UFC, I would not be putting him on short acting fucking. to rent a ball and shit like that that would not be my strategy that stuff stands out like a sore thumb because it is synthetic and it has an extremely low threshold for detection with gas chromatography with mass spectrometry like i said so the margin of error is far lower than with that of bioidentical endogenous testosterone or bioidentical testosterone from exogenous sources i should say so like i said You have a significant amount of leeway within that four to one ratio that you can get away with, regardless of your genetics, regardless of what you're doing. If you're deploying a propionate, you're likely going to get away with several hundred milligrams.
If you're using a suspension, you can probably get away with several hundred more milligrams than that even. So even if I'm wrong on all that, I still think he took at least something prior to the start of his fight career. But at the least, I imagine he is deploying a extremely fast acting testosterone to get around it.
probably has a lot of leeway with his connections in brazil so that is my entire analysis of paulo costa from start to finish all the red flags um acknowledging everything that's happened all of the you know little things he's tested for um over the years all of the uh you know the iv usage the connections he has the uh um getting pulled out of fights injuries all the you could analyze and mainly his body composition what he walks around at year round and the way his body responds to weight cutting and just the amount of lean tissue he holds on a yearly basis without any fluctuation whatsoever despite aggressively bulking up and cutting down constantly and the fact that there is this huge gaping fucking hole of opportunity to dope still even in the ufc so everyone thinks he's getting tested all the time he must be you know natural there's no way you can get around the testing if you know some basics about pharmacology and the way they deploy these tests it's not too difficult to get around from what I can see so let me know what you guys think in the comments down below do you think he is natural do you think he's enhanced um what do you think he's taking what do you think he's doing let me know all your comments are appreciated as you help the algorithm please like subscribe check out my blog more plates, more days.com. If you want to get sent my deep dives into bodybuilding, pharmacology and performance denouncing drug use, I highly recommend you subscribe to the newsletter. It's the first thing in the description below. You will not get sent those articles if you don't sign up for that.
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