Stirring the pot with a massive stick.
Conor McGregor was tested eight times by the United States Anti-Doping Authority in 2015, the same amount as Jose Aldo.
The fighters were on a collision course for most of the year until McGregor set them off on different paths with a 13-second knockout. They are supposed to meet in late 2016 for a UFC featherweight belt and the bad blood is still flowing.
Andre Pederneiras, Aldo’s coach, has cast aspersions on McGregor’s UFC 194 victory by claiming the Dubliner was not drug tested for ‘two months and two days’ in the lead-up to the fight. ‘Dede’ also claims that his Nova União gym offered to pay for thrice-weekly drug tests for both Aldo and McGregor. That offer, he says, was rejected by McGregor’s team.
In an interview with Brazilian outlet Combate, Pederneiras said:
“Conor went two months and two days without being tested before the fight with Aldo. I was pressuring them, asking, asking and asking and nothing happened.
“USADA said, ‘Oh, it’s just the number of tests that has to be equal. Aldo was tested four times, Conor was also tested four times’, but that was just in the two or three weeks when he was already in Los Angeles. But after two months and two days of taking anything, it’s [then] easy to be tested.”
Pederneiras believes it was pointless giving McGregor such a large window to go untested and then ‘making him piss every day’. He did add that he would not make any firm accusations against McGregor without being sure however his implications are damaging enough as they are.
He complained that USADA did not approach McGregor, last October, when their testers were in Dublin for the Fight Night event headlined by Paddy Holohan and declared, “Test Conor seriously and we’ll see what happens.”
The Nova União offer to pay for tests ahead of a McGregor-Aldo rematch has already been made, he declared.
That’s some serious mud-slinging.
