Video: Reaction to UFC-USADA breakup and what it means for the future
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency pulled a stunner last week when it announced it no longer would be the UFC’s drug-testing partner starting in 2024.
The organization specifically singled out Conor McGregor and a presumption that the UFC will try to skirt the rules and let him fight without being in the testing pool for six months with two clean tests. In response, UFC CEO Dana White, UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell and UFC senior vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitsky all vehemently denied that claim and said USADA was out of line for the way it announced the breakup.
Replacing USADA, which the UFC partnered with in 2015, will be a UFC-created drug-testing program overseen by former FBI agent George Piro as an independent administrator.
There is so much to unpack from this monumental news – including the part we’ve all wondered about for months, which is what will happen when McGregor is ready to return sooner than the USADA standard? To weigh in, we welcomed guest fighter Cub Swanson to join the panel of Nolan King and Brian “Goze” Garcia with host “Gorgeous” George Garcia.
You can watch their discussion in the video above, as well as check out this week’s full episode on YouTube below.