Former UFC champ Ken Shamrock: If we remove steroids from sports 'people won't want to turn on their TV anymore'
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Ken “The World's Most Dangerous Man” Shamrock, the mixed martial arts legend and UFC Hall of Famer, doesn't think sports fans really want athletes to give up anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Shamrock shared his views on this topic during an interview with Chad Mendes for Submission Radio on May 17, 2014.
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“I think that when people talk about banning the substances, it's funny because I don’t think people really realise what they’re asking, or what they're saying," Shamrock said. "If they take these things out of the sports, people are going to be backed up 20 years as far as competitiveness. The athleticism and the strength and the stuff these guys are doing will be dropped significantly and the entertainment value will drop with it, and I don’t really think people realize what they’re asking for.”
Shamrock believes that fans have become accustomed to a certain high level of performance in sports. And these performances have been sustained for a very, very long time by steroids and PEDs. Rampant steroid use has been going on at the elite level for over fifty years. If people understood how dependent sports performances have become on these drugs, the fans would not be so supportive of efforts to eliminate steroids.
“It'll be so bad that people won’t want to turn on the TV anymore because they're not going to be able to see what there used to seeing," Shamrock told Mendes.
Shamrock, due to his hypermuscular physique, was long suspected of using anabolic steroids long before he admitted using them. While Shamrock has not hidden the fact that he has used steroids, he has denied using them while “in the ring”.
“I never entered into the ring while using steroids,” Shamrock claimed on AXS TV's “Inside MMA” earlier this year. “I was never in the ring and fought with steroids – ever. Just to get that clear. But I have used steroids in the past."
Shamrock believes steroids are unfairly demonized. Rather than being performance-enhancing drugs, Shamrock characterized steroids as a useful, if not necessary, adjunct to maintain the health of elite athletes; PEDs facilitate physical recovery from the extreme nature of the training and competition.
Shamrock claims that anti-doping efforts have back-fired. Rather than eliminate steroids from sports, the efforts have only pushed steroid use underground. Athletes are unable to attain human grade pharmaceutical steroids and are forced to purchase the drugs on the black market; the anti-doping rules prevent athletes from going to a doctor so that their health can be closely monitored. The result is that athletes are placing their health at an increased risk due to the lack of medical supervision.
Shamrock thinks the current war on steroids has failed. He suggested that the entire anti-doping machine should be replaced by a system of medically-supervised doping. If doping is permitted, the use of PEDs can be closely monitored and supervised such that the use of steroids and other drugs can be used at a relatively safe threshold.
"I think that If they could somehow find a safe level, make these guys all make sure they got their own doctors to put 'em on it, if they're gonna go on it to have their own doctors put 'em on it and make sure that the doctors are giving physicals every month, once a month, keeping them at a safe level, I think that’s how you fix the problem,” said Shamrock.
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