Shannon Knapp: “Invicta fighters will be randomly tested.”

Invicta FC CEO Shannon Knapp thinks that female athletes should be held to the same standards as their male counterparts, and that includes making sure they are ‘clean’ when they fight in her cage. However, Knapp also wants to make it clear that Invicta FC wasn’t implementing these measures just because of the company’s latest signing, Cristiane Santos, who will return to fighting after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.

As it turns out, the policy has been something they have been working on for quite a while.

Knapp told MMARising:

“The athletes will be tested, and this is not just a Cris Cyborg testing. We have been in the process of implementing [testing] since before she came on board. The bottom line is that I am all about fairness for the athletes. If I test one, I will test others, and certainly I will never test one [fighter] in a bout and not the other. We want to promote healthy female athletes.”

“It’s the right thing to do. There is a growing [PED] issue and a growing concern on my part with what is happening in the sport. I think that female athletes should be no different [from men] and I think that they should have to show that they are competing clean as well. I don’t think that steroid abuse is gender biased at all.”