'Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman' drug tests come back 'invalid'

Drug testing for the August 18 Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman event in San Diego has been classified as "invalid," the California state athletic commission (CSAC) told media members on Monday afternoon.
The commission would not comment any further, with a spokesperson saying, "we have no additional information" when asked for further details. An "invalid" test is one in which a laboratory is prevented from obtaining a valid result due to any number of circumstances surrounding it.
UFC vice president of regulatory affairs Marc Ratner on Monday told MMA Fighting that the issue was caused by a problem with either the chain of custody or the way the test was collected by CSAC's inspectors.

Ratner said he learned of the result just prior to the information being released to the media.
"It was something wrong with the collection method," he said. "Our fighters in good conscience gave their specimens. That's all I know."
Asked if he'd ever experienced such an issue in the past, Ratner said no.

"In all my years in the Nevada commission, we had some test that was out of range with the temperature or something, but that was one out of thousands, so it's very, very rare," he said.
Ratner said that all fighters that were requested to provide a sample did so, although he did not know how many of the 18 fighters on the card were drug tested. Typically, all of the fighters on the main card are tested, along with a few on the undercard, but the numbers often vary by commission.

Recently, the CSAC has been mired by political infighting with its supervisory body, the Department of Consumer Affairs. CSAC's executive officer George Dodd resigned in July, shortly after he was censured for not informing the DCA that the commission was insolvent. The inability to properly drug test a show will do nothing to raise confidence in their ability to properly regulate an event, though Ratner said he will speak with them about the situation in the near future.