Vitor Belfort: natty or not?

Confirmed "The Phenom" — UFC 12 tournament winner at 19, and the face of the TRT era

Short answer. Verdict: confirmed. At the peak physique on this page, Vitor Belfort is 6'0" (183 cm) and 185 lbs (84 kg) at roughly 8% body fat. That works out to an FFMI of 22.9, against the ~25 mark cited as the natural ceiling.

The numbers (estimated)

Note. Fighting weight is the listed figure; the body-fat number is an estimate. The verdict is not — it rests on two failed tests and a commission suspension. See the methodology page for how we judge.

Vitor Belfort failed twice, eight years apart.

After PRIDE 32 in October 2006 he tested positive for 4-hydroxytestosterone. The Nevada State Athletic Commission suspended him nine months and fined him $10,000. He said it came from an over-the-counter supplement, or possibly from rehabilitative injections given by a Brazilian endocrinologist after knee surgery.

In February 2014 he failed a random test for elevated testosterone, and withdrew from a UFC 173 title fight after the commission banned testosterone replacement therapy exemptions.

Confirmed.

The TRT part is the story

Belfort’s second failure is the more interesting one because for a period he was not hiding anything. Fighters could apply for a therapeutic use exemption for testosterone, and the sport granted them. His most feared run happened inside that window. When the exemptions went away, so did the fight.

That is a useful thing to hold onto when reading any athlete’s page here: “he passed his tests” and “he was allowed to use testosterone” were, for several years, the same sentence in mixed martial arts.

The numbers

He is listed at 6’0” and 185 lbs at middleweight. A fighter makes a weight class; the scale is the sport’s own constraint, so size tells you almost nothing. The tests told everyone what the scale could not.

Verdict

Confirmed — a 2006 positive with a commission sanction, and a 2014 testosterone failure he disclosed himself.