Twitter Mailbag: How concerned should we be about 'Cyborg's' retroactive exemption?

In this Twitter Mailbag, did the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) make the right move in letting “Cyborg” off the hook? Is the light heavyweight division suddenly in big trouble? And what would you say to fighters wondering whether they should keep at it or find a new line of work?

All that and more in the TMB. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

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The entire phrase “retroactive exemption” should give us pause. If you want a therapeutic-use exemption (TUE) so you can take a banned substance, there aren’t too many good reasons why you can’t apply for one before you get caught using that substance.

Which is not to say that there’s never a good reason. Emergencies happen, and if it’s a matter of your health, you don’t want to get caught up doing paperwork and waiting for it to work its way through while you suffer. You just want to go to the doctor and fix the problem, which is understandable.

But Cristiane Justino not only failed to apply for a TUE in advance, she failed to disclose her use of a banned substance until after she was caught using it. That’s where she created more problems for herself than she needed to.

If you think you’re not doing anything wrong, why hide it? And if there aren’t any consequences for that, why shouldn’t other fighters in a similar situation just go ahead and use what they want, see if they can beat the test, then apply for a retroactive TUE as a last resort?

At the same time, I still prefer USADA’s general willingness to hear arguments and come up with reasonable responses as opposed to the inflexible rigidity that we’ve seen from many state athletic commissions. It’s not a flawless system (the plight of Lyoto Machida reminds us of that), but at least it seems like a system more capable of changing when its flaws are exposed.

In order to explain the appeal to you, I’d have to understand it myself first. I don’t. If Georges St-Pierre is going to come back and challenge for a UFC title immediately, it only makes sense for it to be the welterweight title that he never lost. If he’s going to come back and do fun/weird fights outside his usual weight class, why not do it against someone like Anderson Silva, just so we can scratch that itch once and for all?

The thing about GSP’s return is, the UFC could do almost anything with him and make a bunch of money. But middleweight is the division where you have a polarizing champion and a wealth of eager contenders. You throw GSP in there now, you’re creating a needless roadblock, and for what? To make some quick cash? St-Pierre will do that no matter who he fights. But as long as there’s serious business happening in the middleweight title picture, keep him out of it.

One thing worth remembering here is that the MMA sponsor market was hurting even before the UFC made that exclusive apparel deal with Reebok. If you recall, that’s actually one of the chief justifications UFC executives used. They claimed to be “fixing” the sponsorship situation for their fighters, even if the fix cost many of those fighters thousands of dollars.

(Side note: UFC executives also initially claimed that fighters would receive all, or at least a vast majority, of the Reebok money. But according to investor documents, the $4 million “exposure fee” that Reebok pays the UFC is set to increase to $8 million in 2020, the same year the UFC’s “minimum revenue guarantee” from Reebok increases from $1.5 million to $4 million. It should be interesting to see if fighters see a bump in outfitting program pay to match those scheduled increases.)

I’m sure there are some fighters who can do well with sponsors in Bellator, but for the majority it’s still a struggle. A big part of that is a change in the overall market. I think a lot of companies realized that splashing a logo on some fighter’s butt is not, in fact, a guaranteed path to financial success. The few sponsors that are left have the benefit of managers willing to undercut each other and drive the price down.

One thing a lot of managers have moved toward is seeking out local sponsors rather than national ones. That can help certain Bellator fighters, including Josh Thomson, who has fought three times in Bellator and has yet to compete outside of San Jose, Calif., where he’s fairly well known. But for the vast majority of the fighters on the roster? Bellator is not exactly a sponsor’s dream right now.

Until fairly recently, there was no such thing as an MMA journalist. There were, however, plenty of great boxing writers who I looked up to. W.C. Heinz remains one of my all-time favorites (here, read this). Gay Talese is just awesome in general, but also on fighters (this). Nelson Algren wrote some of the best fight fiction there is (a million times this). Then there’s George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote the best historical fiction on the subject (this).

That seems to be the conclusion we’re eager to jump to, in part because the MMA community has pretty much made up its mind about Edmund Tarverdyan and his past work with both fighters. But clearly, Travis Browne and Ronda Rousey have different situations going on.

For one thing, Rousey came back and prepared for her last fight as a budding Hollywood star. There were reports of her asking training partners to sign non-disclosure agreements, claims that she went to great lengths to limit potential damage in sparring – some real Brock Lesnar stuff, in other words.

If I thought I had a career in movies that would pay me more than my career in getting face-punched, I might do the same. But it’s probably not the best way to prepare for the face-punching to come.

Browne, on the other hand, looked pretty good against Derrick Lewis early on. He had a smart game plan, and that strategy was working. Then he allowed himself to be pulled into basically the only kind of fight that Lewis could win, and it ended with him asleep on the mat. I’m not sure how much we can blame training for that one. Though I’m also not sure it’ll stop us from trying.

Like what, sue Mario Yamasaki to get back those lost brain cells? The best most fighters can hope for is a public apology, and even that puts them in a weird position, since the last thing most of them want to hear after a loss is, “Sorry I let you get beat up so bad.”

I wouldn’t say it’s dead, but I can’t call it thriving. The division’s top 10 is already a pretty shallow pool. You take away guys like Misha Cirkunov, Ryan Bader, and Nikita Krylov, and it only gets worse.

The way things are looking, pretty soon seven of top 15 fighters in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA light heavyweight rankings will be fighting outside the UFC. There’s no other division where you can say that right now. Kind of seems like letting talent slip away from the weight class is the last thing the UFC should be doing.

First I’d ask myself two questions: 1) Is there a decent chance that I’ll become champion (or, failing that, a super popular non-champ in the mold of Donald Cerrone) any time soon? 2) Do I have other skills and/or employment options that are best pursued sooner rather than later?

If the answers are no and then yes, I’d bounce. But then, you’re asking a guy never wanted to be a fighter in the place, so it’s easy for me to say that without feeling like I’m giving up on something I always wanted, or something that’s become an essential part of my identity.

For the people who love this, it can be hard to accept that they’ll never feel that thrill again. What other experiences in their working life are going to be anything like walking out into an arena and hearing the crowd go nuts as they elbow a hole in someone’s face? It’s probably easy to tell yourself that you’ve got the rest of your life to work a boring job you hate, but only a short time to live this dream (which might occasionally feel like a nightmare).

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.