This suggestion is so speculative that we should preface it by saying that there is no semblance of official suspicion that Robbie Lawler failed a USADA drug test.
Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, here we go.
Rory MacDonald was certainly doing his utmost to watch his words during the most intriguing segment of his interview on the MMA Hour.
After speaking at length about how he arrived at the decision to make the move from the UFC to rival promotion Bellator, a thought-provoking subject was brought up by the Canadian welterweight.
“Something very interesting came up to me,” MacDonald hinted. “We’re gonna have to see where it goes but it has something to do with my title fight with Robbie. Some very interesting information that came out.”
Fight fans will have no problem in casting their minds back to the now-legendary brawl between MacDonald and Robbie Lawler for the welterweight title at UFC 189 last July.
MacDonald was ahead on the scorecards of the bloody battle but the cumulative damage to his already shattered nose became too much in the fifth and final round as Lawler hung on to his belt via TKO.
But ‘The Red King’ admits he has heard from what he insists is a reliable source that there were some irregularities in the results of a drug test administered to Lawler.
“A lot of people are gonna be very interested to hear about this if it actually is true,” he continued.
“I have to do my research but it could potentially be a very big thing. And it pisses me right off to hear about it, to be honest, because I feel robbed. I came in, I worked hard for that fight, I fought my heart out. I left everything in there, I left my soul. I really poured everything out there. I came in honest and I always have, for my entire career.
“I don’t play with any dirty drugs or any performance enhancers. That’s something I don’t believe in morally. I always believed in myself that if I worked hard, I trained hard and I worked my martial arts techniques then I could get to the top and be the best in the world so the fact that whatever happened in there, if this is true, then it pisses me right off to my core.”
Remaining vague up to that point, MacDonald was pushed on the matter by host Ariel Helwani when the 27-year-old outright said what he had heard in relation to his former opponent.
“Some test results came out four times higher than the limit,” MacDonald clarified.
That statement could well have to do with the below tweet, which reveals some unusual figures in Lawler’s UFC 189 USADA tests but the fact that he was allowed to fight twice since his clash with MacDonald would lead one to believe that USADA saw nothing wrong with Lawler’s results.
Lawlers test data from 189… Urine tests.. Lutinizing Hormone levels 3x current wada limit, t/e ratio whacky… pic.twitter.com/xpaT6Ybrk5
— Dave/Dim (@dimspace) July 30, 2016
And MacDonald was keen to point out that he was just relaying what he had heard and that he didn’t want to officially accuse Lawler of wrongdoing until he had done his research.
“It could be bullshit but we have to look into it,” MacDonald said. “I don’t want to start pointing fingers or anything but look at that team’s history. It makes me very suspicious but I can’t go out and start saying for sure without doing my research and making sure that all of this is true.”
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