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.