{"id":198692,"date":"2025-10-08T21:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198692\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T21:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:09:07","slug":"chael-sonnen-accuses-conor-mcgregor-of-purposefully-avoiding-drug-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198692\/","title":{"rendered":"Chael Sonnen accuses Conor McGregor of \u2018purposefully\u2019 avoiding drug tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chael Sonnen thinks Conor McGregor\u2019s anti-doping policy suspension isn\u2019t exactly what it looks like.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake, Sonnen believes the 18-month suspension McGregor is serving<\/a> (retroactive to September 2024, which makes him eligible to compete again by March 2025) is warranted, but he wonders if the former two-division UFC champion gamed the system to avoid a more costly suspension and possibly a more severe public embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Sonnen is no stranger to spreading gossip when it comes to athlete drug test drama. Famously, Sonnen has oft-repeated a story that UFC star Jon Jones once hid under a cage to avoid a drug test, a tale that was later corroborated by Jones (though Jones claims it was because he would have tested positive for marijuana, not a performance-enhancing drug). He\u2019s now suggesting McGregor also chose flight over fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery dog gets one bite,\u201d Sonnen said on YouTube<\/a>. \u201cEverybody gets a pass. It\u2019s quite literally the reason why they give you three strikes in a calendar year. Everybody\u2019s allowed to be wrong. Everybody\u2019s allowed to be heavy sleeper, just for example. Maybe they come at some part of the day\u2014whatever the excuse might be, you don\u2019t even need to share it. Three is kind of a lot in a 12-month period when your one and only job is to tell them where you are. That\u2019s all that you\u2019re being accused of. You\u2019re not being accused of a substance here, you\u2019re not being accused of anything other than clerically, administratively. Three times in a 12-month period you did not tell us where you were. And for somebody that has as elaborate of a team, I believe they did tell you where they were. I believe the agents were at the right place. This very thing happened with the notorious story of Jon Jones in the ring. That\u2019s a completely true story. They had showed up to where he said that he was, he was not ready for a test, and he went under the ring. That\u2019s a very true story, it\u2019s not folklore.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my envision of what happened here with Conor is something very similar. I\u2019m guessing, but I\u2019m just telling you I believe having this lived this life, I believe they did have his whereabouts. I believe it was accurately updated. I believe he did purposefully not allow them to test him. That\u2019s my belief. I\u2019m not overly upset about it. I\u2019m not overly pointing the finger at Conor. I\u2019m sharing, as a fellow scumbag, some of the psychology that goes in to living that life and trying to stay one step ahead. It\u2019s a great gig until it\u2019s up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to Sonnen\u2019s drug-testing experience is his own sordid history with performance-enhancing drugs, which he has admitted to using and for which he has tested positive for on multiple occasions. McGregor\u2019s suspension is not due to positive tests, but rather a trio of whereabouts violations in which he was scheduled to be tested but could not be found.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s of Sonnen\u2019s opinion that while McGregor has a busy lifestyle, an athlete of his stature would have their schedule regimented in such a way that there shouldn\u2019t be any way he would accidentally get his signals crossed with testers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not a make-believe world where Conor\u2019s schedule was so hectic and so busy they just forgot to update it,\u201d Sonnen said. \u201cAnd his life would be more hectic and more busy than most can relate to. He could be in three different states in the same week. He could be in two different countries in the same weeks. He could be on two different continents in the same week. By the way, we know, because we\u2019ve seen it. Wherever he goes, a camera goes, whether it was on TV working or he brought us something on social media, this is a guy that\u2019s on the move. His whereabouts would be more complicated than somebody else, but you still have a team that is doing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not just getting on airplanes out of the blue. The team is arranging for him to be on an airplane. As a matter of fact, how is he going to get to the plane? The team would help to arrange that transportation. What hotel is he going to stay at? Conor doesn\u2019t land and then ask for a recommendation of where to stay, just for example. Those things are all set by the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anything, Sonnen imagines McGregor\u2019s handlers are just as confused as everyone else as far as how their client could miss multiple scheduled drug tests. The duration of the suspension has also raised eyebrows<\/a>, with McGregor set to be eligible to compete in March, three months before the UFC White House card in June that he has openly campaigned to be a part of.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Conor\u2019s team\u2019s perspective, there\u2019s not somebody over at Team Conor that\u2019s going to be fired,\u201d Sonnen said. \u201cThere\u2019s not somebody that was un-diligent. There\u2019s not somebody that made a mistake, I don\u2019t guess. I\u2019m guessing nobody will be fired and nobody will be brought to your attention and nobody did make a mistake. I\u2019m guessing that they all filled the paperwork out accurately. The accurate airlines, the accurate city, state, and country, and the accurate hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they are going to be asking, \u2018Why?\u2019 They\u2019re going to be turning to their client saying, \u2018Why? How did they not find you? How did they not test you? How did this happen on this date and then four months later after we discussed it, it happened again the very next day?\u2019 That\u2019s one of those spots. I don\u2019t know how Conor will handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chael Sonnen thinks Conor McGregor\u2019s anti-doping policy suspension isn\u2019t exactly what it looks like. Make no mistake, Sonnen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-198692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}