Outside Source
Ultimate Fighting Championship Chief Business Officer Hunter Campbell has issued a scathing response to an announcement recently made by United States Anti-doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart.
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In a statement released on Wednesday, Tygart announced that the partnership between USADA and the UFC will officially end on Jan. 1, 2024.
Additionally, the USADA CEO implied that negotiations for a renewal of the partnership reached a screeching halt due to discussions surrounding former UFC two-division king Conor McGregor‘s return to the USADA testing pool.
USADA has publicly reiterated the need for McGregor to return to the testing pool for a period of six months before being eligible to compete inside the Octagon. “Notorious” suffered a gruesome leg break in his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier a little over two years ago and has not competed since.
According to the statement issued by Tygart, the anti-doping agency felt pressured by the promotion to fast-track McGregor’s ability to compete once again, which violated the “principled stance” that USADA follows for all athletes.
However, according to Campbell, Tygart’s retelling of the entire situation couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Disappointingly, they used Conor McGregor as a vehicle to sort of articulate and reframe a complete misrepresentation of what occurred over the last several months… What I can categorically tell you is what USADA has put out in the last 48 hours could not be further from the truth,” said Campbell in a recent press conference alongside Jeff Novitzky, current senior vice president of athlete health and performance for the UFC.
“What I said to Travis on multiple occasions, including the call on Monday, was there would never be a situation where Conor would fight until he had been in the program for six months… What they’ve done to him is disgusting. For an entity that holds [itself] out to have a level of honor and integrity, using him as a media vehicle to advance a fake narrative is disturbing, disgusting, and I think they have some legitimate legal liability that they should be really concerned with.”
As per Campbell, the Las Vegas-based promotion has been looking for other options for its anti-doping program for the past year and the decision to part ways with USADA wasn’t connected to the happenings surrounding McGregor’s return to the testing pool.
The UFC executive demanded an apology and informed media members that the promotion has sent a letter to USADA demanding a withdrawal of their defamatory press release.
McGregor has yet to publicly comment on the matter as of the time of this writing.
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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