Sonnen Dismisses McGregor USADA Talk: ‘Conor’s Clean’

So much has been said about Conor McGregor no longer being in the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) testing pool that it’s becoming overwhelming. Whether you’re a “Notorious” fan or not the former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) double champ has never tested positive for a banned substance in his entire career. Until that day comes fight fans need to reserve their criticism despite photos like THIS.

Luckily, mixed martial arts (MMA) analyst Chael Sonnen is here to shed some light on McGregor and why the Irish fighter may have removed himself from the USADA testing pool. From his severe leg injury to traveling the world, Sonnen believes McGregor is longer being tested due to USADA’s stringent logistical requirements. This includes USADA needing to know where a fighter is at almost every time of the day. That isn’t something McGregor is able to offer given his busy life as a millionaire celebrity.

“Conor’s clean,” Sonnen said on The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting). “He’s been trolling, he’s been having fun with people. Come on. A guy doesn’t go out and do a crime and then document the crime. Conor put the pictures out. He’s having fun with people. He’s clean.”

“I believe that Conor has chosen his words very carefully,” Sonnen continued. “I believe that he’s creating conversation. I know that every word that he said is to insinuate that he’s avoiding the pool for scandalous reasons. Just to give you an example, Conor spoke five days ago and said, ‘I’ll be ready to enter the pool in February.’ What do you mean you’ll be ready? He knew what he was doing. He wanted that put out there.

“I will tell you, I believe that Conor left the pool. He’s never been clear on this. I believe he left because of logistical reasons. The whereabouts clause in violation of having to let someone know where you are 24/7/365, right, if you’re not where you said you’re going to be, it’s a mark and if you get three marks in a calendar year it’s an instant fail and that fail comes with a minimum punishment of two years. I just bring for you that if he was off doing Road House and medication and he knew he wasn’t going to fight anyway and he just didn’t want to keep up on the organizational side of it, I think that he made the right decision. I think Conor is having fun with people, making them think that he’s on some form of anabolics.”

While McGregor has declared himself clean ahead of a potential return to the Octagon in 2023 people around the MMA community will continue to speculate. Sonnen obviously doesn’t know for sure if McGregor has taken anything controversial this past year, but the former UFC fighter believes “Notorious” has the right to do what he needs to do in order to build his body back up from the horrific leg injury suffered at UFC 264 back in July 2021.

“There are things that are against the rules that would flag you for USADA that are 100 percent medically appropriate and sometimes even urgent and I don’t think any athlete, including Conor McGregor, should have to balance advice of a doctor about his health against a sports agency and they don’t really have room for that,” Sonnen said.

“I don’t think USADA has a lot of flaws, in fact I put them in the category of very reasonable people, but they don’t have anything for that. So if Conor wanted to remove himself to remove subjectivity to any kind of—He did the right thing.”

What say you, Maniacs?