Kade Ruotolo is the reigning ADCC and ONE Championship lightweight submission grappling world champion…
Who has always been open in his criticisms of athletes who use steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDs).
In a recent interview with the Grappling Insider, Kade explained why both him and his brother are so adamant about “staying natural”:
For us, my brother and I, at this point, our main goal, our only goal, it’s not even about making the sport clean, because I don’t even know if it’s possible, but it’s about showing the next generation that you don’t have to do it to get the results and to get to the number one spot.
That’s what we’ve been trying to do as hard as we can. Stay natural and it’s all about integrity for us and not cheating.
To the Ruotolo brothers, winning while being “on gear” would feel like cheating:
And if we were to go take steroids and go win, it wouldn’t feel like we won because we cheated.
Some people don’t feel that way, obviously. But that’s just the way we’ve kind of always looked at things.
Furthermore, Kade doesn’t think that even something like TRT helps with performance on the mats too much:
As far as your testosterone levels to performance. I don’t know how relevant it can possibly be.
I don’t think you need to get those testosterone levels to 1500.
I mean, mine are 400 and I feel just fine.
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