USADA reveals imminent split from UFC amid McGregor testing saga - ESPN

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced Wednesday that UFC fighter Conor McGregor has officially been entered back into the drug-testing pool, the next step ahead of a potential return fight. But CEO Travis Tygart's statement in an accompanying news release came with a caveat: USADA's partnership with the UFC will be over beginning Jan. 1, 2024.

Tygart wrote that the UFC and USADA had a «positive and productive meeting» about a contract renewal back in May. But «the UFC did an about-face» and told USADA on Monday that the promotion would be going in a different direction, Tygart wrote. The UFC hired USADA to run its anti-doping program in 2015.

According to the USADA release, the relationship between the two parties was rendered «untenable» due to the situation around McGregor, the UFC's top star.

«Fighters' long-term health and safety — in addition to a fair and level playing field — are more important to USADA than short-term profits at the expense of clean athletes,» Tygart wrote in the statement.

McGregor removed himself from the USADA drug-testing pool after suffering a fractured leg in a fight against Dustin Poirier in July 2021. According to the UFC's anti-doping policy, maintained by USADA, a fighter who re-enters the drug-testing pool must spend at least six months in the pool and pass two drug tests before competing again. There was a written exception to that rule. The UFC could waive the six-month rule for a fighter if it was deemed unfair to said fighter. But that fighter would still have to pass two drug tests.

USADA said in November 2022 that, in the case of McGregor, it felt such an exemption would not be applicable. In other words, USADA wanted McGregor to spend at least six months in the drug-testing pool