Ex-champ Chris Weidman, a fake USADA agent? Gian Villante explains

FORTALEZA, Brazil – Gian Villante has always been so terrified of getting in trouble with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that he doesn’t even take supplements. But after a bad bout of bronchitis landed him in the hospital, he got the call anyway.

What could have been a tense conversation, however, ended up taking a turn for the hilarious when Villante became thoroughly convinced that the USADA agent on the phone was actually ex-champ and friend Chris Weidman.

“So I’m like, ‘Yeah, OK, Chris – that’s hilarious,'” Villante told MMAjunkie ahead of his UFC Fight Night 106 co-headlining scrap against Mauricio Rua. “They’re like, ‘No sir, sorry.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah yeah, very funny.’ And I hung up on the dude. So then they call, and they’re like, ‘Very funny that Chris Weidman does this to you, but this is not Chris Weidman. This is so and so from USADA.’

“I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t believe you. Stop. I’ve got to go somewhere.’ He keeps telling me this and that. He’s like, ‘We’re sorry, but we’re going to get this taken care of.’ He’s trying to comfort me at this point, so I’m like, ‘Chris wouldn’t be comforting, he’d be trying to make me feel worse. So maybe it isn’t him.'”

Villante was so convinced that Weidman was behind the call that, even after hanging up, he was still trying to rope the ex-champ into admitting guilt.

“First I tell him I failed a drug test, and I’m like, ‘You called me, right?'” Villante said. “I’m still thinking it might be him, like playing with him, and he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ I pretend I’m all sad, so hopefully he’ll tell me that he’s kidding but no, he wasn’t. And then I tell him I’ll be OK.”

Villante (16-7 MMA, 5-4 UFC) did, in fact, end up OK. After proving that the banned substance vilanterol had actually come from a Breo Ellipta inhaler, he was granted a retroactive therapeutic-use exemption and got the green light to make his dream fight with “Shogun” Rua (24-10 MMA, 8-8 UFC) happen.

Given his account of the ordeal that had him landing at the hospital after his most recent scrap – a victorious TKO effort over Saparbek Safarov at UFC Fight Night 102 – one can see why he didn’t really have that difficult of a time making his case.

“After my last fight, in Albany, I was pretty sick during the fight,” Villante said. “I had some fluid around my heart. My heart wasn’t beating right. I wasn’t getting a lot of oxygen in my blood. I was pretty (expletive) up.

“So I had to go to a hospital after the fight – went to a bunch of different doctors, make sure my heart was OK, and they were telling me I had some pretty bad bronchitis, and I had some other things going on. So I went to the hospital and they gave me some inhalers and whatever the hell else they gave me to try to make me feel better.”

The situation is somewhat ironic considering Villante is a fighter who doesn’t take any supplements and goes as far as declaring the type of melatonin he takes to sleep because of his fear of unknowingly ingesting a banned substance.

“I’m literally scared to take protein,” Villante said.

Hassle aside, Villante appreciates USADA’s efforts toward a cleaner sport. And he clarifies that, in spite of his good looks, he got the same treatment anybody else would have.

“I hope USADA stays around; I appreciate what they’re doing,” Villante said. “I didn’t like that it had to come out in the media, that I was on something,  an inhaler for my bronchitis. But right away it looks like you’re on steroids and this and that. But I understand what they’re doing. They’ve got to be fair to everyone else.

“I told them everything, people saying I was getting unfair treatment because I’m so good-looking. But I don’t think it was anything like that. I think it was a pretty unique case of being in the hospital and having to take medication from that.

“And listing the medication that I was taking, which is I didn’t get the TUE beforehand, but I was sick. I don’t think I’ve got any sort of special treatment, I think they treat us all pretty fairly, and I’d like to see them test more, honestly.”

To hear Villante tell the full story in his own words, check out the video above.

For more on UFC Fight Night 106, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.