One of the pioneers of MMA has giving an unflinching account of his experiences in the wild west days of the sport.
Former UFC heavyweight champion and decorated wrestler Mark Kerr has opened up about his PED use in the early days of MMA, in a brilliant mini-documentary from Bobby Razak.
Now 46, the Smashing Machine explained that he was completely clean throughout his wrestling career, and only turned to performance enhancing substances once he began fighting for the UFC.
“Up to the age of 27, I didn’t touch any PED’s at all. I went through all my Olympics, all my NCAA stuff taking no chemicals whatsoever. I think part of it was me having a little bit of fear from not knowing what was going to happen or take place. I went ahead and experimented with anabolics and androgenics.”
“On my first fight in Brazil, I was on a small dose of anabolics. When I went into the UFC, I thought of stepping it up in another gear. I was probably 275 lbs with 5% body fat. I could bench press a small car and can squat a small house. It was totally overkill.”
Kerr also recounted an anecdote which showed how lenient the UFC doctors were towards steroid use.
“I remember for my first UFC fights, they had faxed over my blood work. I had forgot to bring it. I remember sitting across the table from the doctor and the doctor looking at my liver enzymes. When you do anabolic steroids and you do them in high amounts, it messes with your liver enzymes.”
“I remember him looking at the liver enzymes and going ‘do you realise that this is eight times the normal amount you’re supposed to have?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah’ and he goes, ‘I just want you to be aware of that’ and I’m like ‘Ok, I’m aware of it’ and that was it. You just go on and they allow you to fight.”
Check out the full short film in the video embedded below in which Kerr goes into greater detail of his well abuse of drugs such as steroids, cocaine and vicodin.KErr claims he’s been sober for over a year now.
Hat-tip to Bloody Elbow
