Who actually tests you: WADA, VADA and the body that bans you

Fighters ask whether they are tested by WADA or by VADA. The honest answer is that WADA has probably never taken a sample from you, VADA cannot ban you, and the organisation that can is usually neither of them.

This is not pedantry. Almost every serious mistake I see around anti-doping starts with a fighter assuming there is one system, one list and one authority. There is not. In professional combat sport there are several, they overlap unevenly, and the paperwork you owe depends on which ones apply to your specific bout.

So this is the map.

WADA writes the rules. It does not usually collect your urine

The World Anti-Doping Agency produces two things that matter to you: the World Anti-Doping Code, and the Prohibited List that is updated every year.

What it does not generally do is turn up at your door. Sample collection under the Code is carried out by the organisations that have signed it. National anti-doping organisations and international federations.

If you box as an amateur, that is your national body and your international federation, working to WADA's Code and WADA's List. WADA sets the standard; somebody else knocks.

This distinction matters the moment something goes wrong, because the body that decides your case is the one that tested you, not the one that wrote the rulebook.

Professional boxing sits outside that structure

This next bit explains everything else.

Professional boxing has no single international federation that has signed the Code. There are multiple sanctioning bodies and dozens of national and state commissions, and as UK Anti-Doping puts it plainly, anti-doping in professional boxing is not centralised and does not run under the Code the way an Olympic sport does.

So the sport filled the gap privately. Testing gets commissioned. By a sanctioning body, by a commission, or by the promoters themselves. That is the space VADA operates in.

What VADA is, and what it is not

The Voluntary Anti-Doping Association is a private, non-profit testing organisation working in boxing and mixed martial arts. It is generally well regarded, and the reason fighters ask to be enrolled is that its testing is unannounced and independent of the promotion.

Three things about it are constantly misunderstood.

Its list is not WADA's list. VADA tracks the WADA List closely, but tracking is not copying. The clearest example: VADA removed cannabinoids from its list in 2012 and they have not been on it since, while they remain a WADA matter. There are threshold substances too: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, cathine, each with its own concentration limit, and those limits are the ones in the VADA document, not the ones you half-remember from somewhere else.

VADA does not sanction anyone.

This is the one fighters get most wrong. VADA collects samples and reports results. It states in its own list that because it does not levy sanctions, it does not even bother classifying substances as specified or non-specified the way the Code does. If a sample comes back adverse, results management and any punishment are handled by the commission or the sanctioning body.

The people who licensed the fight.

You can sit in both systems at once. A professional who also competes internationally, or who has been placed in a national testing pool, can owe obligations to a Code signatory and to VADA simultaneously.

Two lists, two sets of forms, two definitions of where you have to be.

Who tests whom, in one table

The structure differs by where you compete, and most of the confusion comes from applying one sport's answer to another.

Two consequences fighters get wrong.

Not being tested is not the same as being outside the rules. A fighter on small shows may go years without a test and still face sanction the moment he steps up to a level that tests, for something taken while nobody was looking.

Testing can arrive from more than one direction at once. A commission test and a promotion test are separate processes with separate paperwork, and declaring a medication to one does not declare it to the other.

If you are in a testing pool, the paperwork can end your year on its own

This applies on the Code side, and it deserves its own warning because the sample can be clean and you can still be banned.

Athletes placed in a registered testing pool must file whereabouts, normally each quarter, through WADA's ADAMS system. That filing includes a daily 60-minute window during which you must be available at a stated location.

• A filing failure is submitting late, or submitting information too vague or incomplete to find you.
• A missed test is not being available during your 60-minute slot at the address you gave.
• Any combination of three of those, in a rolling 12-month period, is an anti-doping rule violation in its own right, with a ban that can reach 2 years. The full mechanics are here.

Two details that catch people. You are accountable for the whole 60 minutes, not just the start of it, and the officer is under no obligation to phone you first. And the 12 months roll.

They are not a calendar year, so the window moves with you.

The one thing to do about all of this

Ask, in writing, which anti-doping programmes apply to your bout. Ask the promoter or your manager, and keep the reply.

That single email answers everything downstream: which prohibited list governs you, whether you owe whereabouts and to whom, who would handle a result, and therefore which document you check before you take anything at all.

Without it you are guessing, and under strict liability guessing is expensive.

Then, whatever the answer is, the daily discipline does not change. Every product goes on a written log with its batch number. Every ingredient gets checked against the list that actually applies to you. And anything you cannot verify does not go in your body, because the consequence of a contaminated tub lands on you and not on the manufacturer.

Why this lands on you

The fragmentation is not the fighter's fault, and it is not going to be fixed by the fighter. But the cost of it lands entirely on him.

An Olympic athlete has one federation, one list and one national body, and can be told exactly what applies. A professional boxer has a different combination for almost every fight, and is usually told nothing until the doping control officer is in the room. That asymmetry is the whole problem, and the only defence available to an individual is to know which system he is in before camp starts rather than after.

It takes one email. I have never seen a fighter regret sending it.

Which programmes apply to a given bout, and from what date, is a contract term rather than a fact. Where to find it is in the bout agreement.

Common questions

What is the difference between WADA and VADA?

WADA writes the World Anti-Doping Code and the Prohibited List, and in most cases has never collected a sample from you. VADA, the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, is a private non-profit that carries out unannounced testing in boxing and mixed martial arts. VADA is not a Code signatory, so it runs its own prohibited list and its own whereabouts requirements, and they are not the same as the Code ones.

Can VADA ban a fighter?

No. VADA collects samples and reports results. The power to sanction sits with the commission or the sanctioning body governing that bout, which is usually neither WADA nor VADA.

Who actually tests professional boxers?

Professional boxing sits outside the WADA structure that governs Olympic sport. Testing is arranged by state or national commissions, by the sanctioning body, or privately through a programme both camps agree to enter. Which of those applies depends on the bout, not on the sport.

Does VADA use the WADA Prohibited List?

Not identically. Because VADA operates outside the Code it maintains its own list, so a substance permitted under one programme is not automatically permitted under the other. Check the programme you are actually enrolled in rather than assuming a single list applies.