MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - 🚨BREAKING: UFC Set to Drop USADA in 2024

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Conor McGregor is officially in the testing pool for USADA, but that won't matter after 2023 is over as the organization announced today that the UFC's contract with them expires at the end of the year and won't be renewed. This is the official Morning Kombat reaction. Morning Kombat is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts.     For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stop sitting on your Aeroplan points and get big savings so you can be somewhere you actually want to be, like on a beach. Right now you can save up to 25% in Aeroplan points when you book a trip to one of 180 plus Air Canada destinations worldwide. So stop sitting on your next trip and start saving on one. Don't miss out. Your chance to save in points ends February 23rd. Book at aircanada.com. Conditions apply. Hey, we are live. I believe we're alive. I believe everything is going the way that it's supposed to. Hi, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. It is the 11th of October, 529 p.m. on the East Coast. I'm here on the East Coast.

I'm here because we have some breaking news. Oh, yes, we fucking do. We have lots of breaking news. Now, what's kind of funny about this breaking news is that I could have done it had I wanted to just on some of the announcements related to UFC 294 because there are some interesting announcements about that. Some of that which you heard on this morning's Morning Combat, episode 500 by the way, thanks to everyone who took part. But there's another element and this broke this afternoon. So I'm not here to say that the news about UFC 294 is not important or somehow not cool or irrelevant.

It's relevant. It's cool. It's interesting. It's a big deal. But it's not as big a deal as what I'm about to get to. Let me adjust my glasses. This is a great day. This is a fantastic day.

Oh, you know what? And let me make sure that I have just what I need. Yep, I sure do, to make sure. USADA does not send me press releases because I guess I'm an angry critic of them. They don't send me any information, but this news does come to us via Aaron Bronstetter. I'm going to try and blow this up so you guys can see it as best I can. Nah, but it doesn't really help because it only makes that bigger. Yeah. All right. So let me just read to you what we have. I'm going to throw this on the screen if I can. Take a gander here. Let's look, shall we?

So here's what we have. I'm going to put myself more like that. If you can't read it, don't worry. I will read it to you. Here is the announcement quote. We can confirm Conor McGregor has re-entered the USADA testing pool as of Sunday, October 8th, 2023. So first things first, Conor McGregor is back in the USADA testing pool, but that's not the most important story. This is the most important story. I continue. We have been clear and firm with the UFC that there should be no exception given by the UFC for McGregor to fight

until he has returned to negative tests and been in the pool for at least six months. The rules also allow USADA to keep someone in the testing pool longer before competing based on their declarations upon entry in the pool and testing results. Unfortunately, they say, we do not currently know whether the UFC will ultimately honor the six-month or longer requirement because as of January 1st, 2024, USADA will no longer be involved with the UFC anti-doping program. Oh, holy shit balls. Despite a positive and productive meeting about a contract renewal in May, 2023, USADA says the UFC did an about face and informed USADA on Monday, October 9th, that it was going in a different direction. They continue.

We are disappointed for the UFC athletes. oh are you, who are independent contractors who rely on our independent gold standard global program to protect their rights to a clean, safe, and fair octagon. What bullshit. The UFC's move imperils the immense progress made within the sport under USADA's leadership. The relationship between USADA and UFC became untenable given the statements made by UFC leaders and others questioning USADA's principled stance

that McGregor not be allowed to fight without being in the testing pool for at least six months. One UFC commentator echoed this, recently declaring that USADA should not oversee the UFC program since we held him to the six-month rule involving McGregor and since we do not allow fighters without an approved medical basis to use performance enhancing drugs like experimental unapproved peptides or testosterone for healing or injuries

simply to get back in the octagon. I bet you don't. Fighters' long-term health and safety, in addition to a fair and level playing field, are more important to USADA than short-term profits. Get the fuck out of here. At the expense of clean athletes. USADA, they say, is proud of the work we've done over the past eight years to clean up the UFC, and we will continue to provide our unparalleled service to UFC athletes through the remainder of our current contract, which ends December 31st, 2023.

As always, we will continue to uphold the rights and voices of clean athletes in the sport. Yeah, you don't speak for any of them, but okay, that's neither here nor there. Oh, what a day this is. Hmm? Yeah, my door's locked. What a day this is. So let's just recap here a little bit. Number one, Conor McGregor is in the testing pool. Testing will continue through the remainder of 2023. As of January 1st, 2024, we don't really know what the answer to that is. We'll come back to that in just a second. According to USADA, they had a meeting in May that apparently was productive about a contract renewal. They had another meeting, they say, October 8th, excuse me, October 9th.

So I guess the day, so two days ago, right? Is that what they had? Yeah. Two days ago, um, Monday, October 9th. And they said they had in their description an about face and want to go in a different direction. Uh, I'm really glad that UFC did this as a matter of fact, this is a amazing news. I mean, there's so many different dimensions to this. So first of all, let's talk about the Conor McGregor angle because there's much more to it than that. But the Conor McGregor angle is pretty big. He will be subject to being in the pool for the remainder of the year. And we don't know what the UFC will do at the beginning of the new year. But at least insofar as USADA is concerned, there will be no limit on his ability to re-enter the competition space.

Now, they still might end up saving him on a timeline that mimics something close to the six-month if they put him on UFC 300, which is what they're widely expected to do, at least presumed to want to do. He still is the biggest name in the sport. He has been gone for quite some time. UFC 300, you would imagine, is going to be a monster priority for the company.

So that still might be in play. He might end up still waiting the six months just because the UFC might end up wanting to do that to accommodate the calendar. But they would no longer have to abide by any agreement that they would have with USADA as it would be null and void. I wrote in December. Excuse me. When did I write this? Back in 2022, I wrote the following. This is what I said. This was December 5th, 2022. Quote, if one of Conor McGregor's final

contributions to the sport is that he weakened USADA's grip on use of otherwise prohibited forms of rehabilitative medicine, that could legitimately make a lasting impact. I go on to write, finally, amazing to see McGregor has demonstrated the obvious, namely that deferring every rule creation and enforcement about anti-doping protocol to what USADA wants isn't a good idea. And then lastly, and this is the big one for me, I'm old enough to remember when I received nothing but pushback at the idea athletes' desires and legitimate needs

will not and cannot be met by USADA protocol alone. And this is a bad thing. Glad to see years later that this very obviously true claim beginning to take root. This is a big day for a lot of different parties and a big day for me in particular, if I may. Because USADA never had a right to be here. This is something that we've talked about for quite some time. USADA always claims to speak for the voice of the athletes, and manifestly they do not. There might be certain athletes in particular sports or particular

groups that do elect USADA to mimic their interests or work hand in hand with them. And I really don't have any issue with that. The UFC athletes never, ever asked for USADA. They never, ever had a hand in crafting the anti-doping protocol. And in any sport where the athletes have a modicum of protection or a modicum of representation, whether it's a trade association, whether it's a union, you name it, they have the ability to craft and at least play a role and have a hand in subduing some of the more heavy-handed policies that anti-doping zealots wish to produce. That's why you see the NFLPA get involved or the NBAPA get involved.

Ultimately, there is some anti-doping protocol that goes into the NFL or that goes into basketball or the NBA, but they don't have sole say over it. These guys who they note in this own release that Aaron Bronstedter put out, they note in that release that these are independent contractors and it never seems to dawn on them whether or not they got permission from them to even fucking be there. Of course they never did. They partied with an entity that is a dominant market force, literally being sued for potential monopolistic overreach. They partnered with them and then presumed to speak for the athletes. How embarrassing for them to even suggest that

they hold this mantle as the voice of the athlete in a situation where they are literally, literally being coerced into using and being a part of their anti-doping protocol. And I just want to point out one more time, remember they ruined the career. He's not the only one of Tom Lawler with their total bullshit, fake science that wasn't good enough. They never apologized to him. They never made amends to him. They never did anything for him. And he wasn't the only guy that they fucked. They had heavy handed policies to begin with where they were just broadly announced any violation to the public, whether or not there were mitigating circumstances after the fact they had to dial a lot of that back. They had to admit that basically the entire strict liability standard cannot hold in a world of contamination where the water that comes out of

your tap has, you know, not merely microplastics in it, but they might have trace pharmaceuticals in it. They might have any number of different substances that could be banned and they really don't have any way to sort this. You might be asking, Luke, have athletes been busted for drinking water that had trace chemicals in it that were of a performance enhancing benefit? The answer is yes. That's on record. That's on USADA's fucking website. You can find that yourself. It was an American gymnast that that happened to. That's a very real thing. They had to come out, at least through Jeff Nowitzki, and admit that the strict liability standard is even barely enforceable at this point. All of the pillars of what they have tried to do, whether they claim to be the voice of the athlete,

whether they are trying to say we clean up the sport, they never asked permission from the other stakeholders. They never worked with the other stakeholders. All they ever got from USADA were punishments and varsity jackets if they went through with the rigmarole long enough. And that's it. You're like, well, they got a clean sport out of it. Did they?

To what extent has USADA provided any, and listen to the word I am picking here, any, A-N-Y, any public evidence that what they did through working with the UFC had a meaningful impact on concussion reduction, on laceration reduction, on hospital admittance, on anything. Show me, I'm going to keep saying it, I've been saying it since day fucking one of this whole operation, show me the evidence that it made MMA safer. I have been waiting since the beginning and the introduction of this program for some of it. It has not fallen in my lap. My email address, if anyone happens to have any, please, by all means, send it to me. I will be your Huckleberry. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. Show it to me.

Show it to me. Where is it? Because I can tell you when they were being introduced as this savior of combat sports, which really was just this overreaction to the TRT era. The TRT era was out of control, but this was vast overreach. There is no organization in all of sports, certainly combat sports, that parades their own success without proving an ounce of it more than USADA. What have they actually demonstrated to all the physiques look different? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? This is this, you know, this completely unscientific way of evaluating whether or not people are using or to what extent they've used or to what extent they've benefited or to what extent this USADA halo has meaningfully made mma safer the arguments they used were that one it would make the playing field uh safer or i should say more level which is somewhat true also not true right because the guys who are really good at using who can get the designer stuff or better methods of avoiding detection they're going to have their

advantages entrenched these are usually more senior fighters with more wealth this is the common pattern that you see in other sports why would MMA be any different it will entrench their position while diminishing everyone else's although it might get more or I should say you might get less use in the more rank and file but this idea that like it would categorically improve the um the the fairness of all of this. That is still quite debatable, but more to the point, well, we're not hitting, this was the argument that all of these fucking rubes used at the time. Well, we're not hitting a baseball. We're not bouncing a basketball. We're not throwing a football. These are people's lives. And of course you want to take safety as seriously as you can. But again, I'm going to ask, show me the evidence since the introduction to USADA that they

have made a meaningful impact on the health and safety of the athletes. Show it to me. I'm waiting, been waiting all this time. Show it to me. And they can't because they don't have it. It doesn't fucking exist. It's just an argument that they make that may be true, maybe not true. They have no real way of proving it. They just want you to believe it. And in order to believe it, they want to

overrun the rights of athletes left and right. Remember when they had to watch Tim Kennedy shower nude? Remember that? Oh, well, athletes should have to go through this. Why should athletes have to go through these grotesque privacy invasions for work that we're not even sure has a demonstrable impact on health and safety? No one ever made this argument. No one ever proved anything. No one ever connected these fucking dots ever, ever, ever, not once in the entire time. Do you remember any, you saw at a press conference where this happened? Do you remember any meeting of the association of boxing commissions where they submitted any of this data? Do you remember any white papers coming out in the last, what was it? Eight years, however long it's been where this was a thing. Does anyone remember any of this? Cause I don't, and I've been waiting and I've been watching and I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it. It has been a series of arguments that they put forward, taking advantage of athletes who have no protections, punishing them in many cases, severely affecting their career in rare cases, but real cases, destroying their careers,

later admitting the science upon which those decisions were made, they now know is bullshit. Oops, we done goofed. And now into this space where we're very proud of our record. What record? What record? Show me what the record is. LukeThomasNews at gmail.com. Show it to me. Show it to me. Show me the evidence that what they did on the arguments that they used to justify it made a difference. Show it to me. I've been waiting. I've been waiting all this time and no one's ever produced a fucking thing because there's nothing to produce. It doesn't exist. It's just an argument that people make. If you really want to protect athletes, but you also want to respect their

rights. We'll talk about that in just a second. VADA is a much better system. If the UFC ends up picking VADA, the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, I really don't have much of an issue with it at all. Almost zero. Almost none. Because then you have independent contractors electing to enter the system, not being coerced into a system of dubious benefit. What was the record of death and paralysis prior to Ayusada getting involved in UFC? Just as good as the one when they were here. Just as good as the one when they were here. It's a dangerous sport. I understand that. I don't want to present to you that we should have cavalier attitudes about the danger that these athletes involve themselves in. But we also have to be very clear

that if an organization is going to make big, broad claims and then act in a punitive way to enforce those claims, shouldn't they prove that their claims are true? Seems pretty fair to me. Seems pretty fair to me. There was an overcorrection in the most absurd of ways during the TRT era. And I understand the TRT era was just, you you know these guys were absolutely gaming the system i understand that and the commissions they got kind of overrun in the process so they went to this but i think there's a few factors at play here one they want mcgregor to fight i don't know if they'll again they may end up waiting the six month window as a consequence in order to achieve this end that they're talking about you know we, we're getting him at UFC 300, so it could end up lining that way. But I think that the friction that they, that they suffered, or I should say the friction

that the UFC felt, they didn't like too much, which I can understand. And beyond just the friction, there was the question of necessity. After this Mark Hunt lawsuit got resolved, I think it changed their perspective. Now, granted, that was when USADA was here, although it was the UFC electing to take advantage of loopholes that they wrote into the contract, so that's not really a USADA issue exactly in that way.

But once they were able to be legally no longer liable for someone being admitted into a fight, having a bout agreement, and then he pops after the fact, and they're like, oh, well, you knew, but there's really no evidence that they can detect, which isn't to say that they didn't, but it's a function of what you can prove. He couldn't prove that they knew anything. They realized, oh, our legal liability here is much more limited than what we had imagined it to be. All USADA ever provided when they provided it was social or otherwise catastrophe insurance, right?

Because we can't really prove the claims that they're making, which to me is just as fucking hilarious that I'm supposed to take this as like biblically true in a world where they can't and haven't proved anything but more to the point what what are they valuable for there is in the world in which we live any any drug that is reported on tylenol marijuana alcohol is a drug whatever you have to understand the vast majority of the reporting around it is going to be inaccurate or certainly requiring of significant more investigation. And ultimately, in the end, for USADA, I'm not sure where this was going with the drug argument, although that part is true. Um, my phone has been blowing up since I went live.

I'm not sure what's happening here. Yeah, here we go. Um, introducing the new McSpicy from McDonald's. It looks like a regular chicken sandwich, but it's actually a spicy chicken sandwich. McSpicy. Consider yourself warned. Limited time only at participating McDonald's in Canada. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments?

Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card, the credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. To wrap this part of it up, there's no doubt in my mind that the Mark Hunt lawsuit

played a role in all of this. It played a role. It played a role that it told them that, um, again, the amount of legal exposure they were potentially facing is not nearly what they had worried it might be. But I, you know what I do want to do? I want to get back to where we were when they first got introduced and how many arguments I had to hear at the time and how many people tripping in my ear and fighters getting bitter at me. Let me, let me just ask a question to the fighters. So many of them were tripping in my ear about how bitter they were when I was arguing these people, like they make claims and they don't prove shit. Like they're not asking anyone's permission to do this. They're doing it in a heavy handed way. You guys sure this is a good idea? Oh, this is what the

sport needs and the sport can't function this way. Is, are any of these people going to quit now that USADA is not here? Any of them? If it's so important and so serious and so essential to the question about whether we can even do this at all, which is what they were telling me. We have to do this to avoid disaster, right? That social insurance, I don't think I made the point fully. The social insurance. Because there's drug hysteria in this world. And if you've got an organization that's like, we're fighting crime, we're the ones who are out here trying to protect you from the effects of these harmful drugs,

in a different way, of course, not actually ingesting them, but what it might mean to be around others who are, you need us. We're the last line of defense, whether or not they're proving these claims at all. They knew that a lot of Americans believe that, not just Americans, a lot of people all over the world believe that. And so if you hire this agency to then look over your roster, what ends up happening now is you're like,

oh, this is the protection. So if a catastrophe were to strike, they could say, hey, listen, we did everything we could. We did everything we could. We did everything possible that we could to protect ourselves blah blah blah now i don't think that they're in the same kind of place where they necessarily have to worry about that like they did back in the the aughts or the 2010s we're in a different place now with the sport and i don't think exactly the same kind of consequence would happen although i will say god forbid knock on wood nothing happens I will say it would be kind of, it'd be bad, obviously. It'd be interesting to see what happens if there is some kind of imminent disaster after dropping USADA,

what kind of public reaction there might be. But I don't really think it will matter that much in the end. I don't think the cover that they once provided is largely now gone. Now, this doesn't mean, by the way, folks are like, oh, well, maybe UFC won't do anything. I don't know what UFC is going to do. I don't know what program they're going to institute. I don't know what that's going to be. And it could be potentially even worse.

I doubt that, but it potentially could be. But either way, let's go back to when they were introduced, whatever that was, 2016, 2020. I can't remember the time anymore of when their initial foray into the sport was. Let's go back. And more than that, I think the foray into the sport was. Let's go back. And more than that, I think the 2014, even something like that. Let's go back to that here a little bit.

And it never made sense to begin with where people will be like, oh, my MMA has to be anti-doped. It has to be. Otherwise, I can't watch it. But of course, they would watch any other competitor that didn't do any of those things and never seem to care. Fighters would tell you, this is the most important thing. This is the most important thing that matters.

Then they go to another organization that does no testing whatsoever. Guys are using everything in every possible way. Like it's just like rampant use and they don't even care. They didn't bother me. And then they would even say, yeah, it doesn't matter what they're on. I'm still going to win. Like even from the outset, there was never consistent messaging on the pushback to USADA or excuse me, to the pushback, to the criticisms about USADA that folks like me were making. And I'm sorry to make it all about me, but you know, let's not pretend there were a lot of people who were agreeing me back agreeing with me back when USADA was introduced. I had so many people coming after me, fighters coming after me, and not one of them is going to change a fucking thing about what they do as a result of this

departure, which shows you that the stance that they took to begin with was never principled. It was never rooted in fact. It was rooted in drug hysteria, like just about every other decision that institutions make in this country. And now here we are about to be on the other side of it and no one's going to say or do shit about it. That tells you what was actually really rooting everything underneath it. It was, we got, we got to do something. We got to do something. We got, we got to panic and we got to make a decision. You guys sure this is the best decision to make in a panicked state? Yeah, it turns out not. Turns out the UFC realized, I think wisely, that the utility of this organization has faded quite dramatically, if there ever was any to begin with outside of the social or otherwise the

catastrophe insurance. I want to revisit every single person who killed me in 2014, whatever the year was, I can't remember anymore, who killed me over and over again about how this was a necessity for the sport had to happen. And look at what Conor McGregor did. Conor McGregor had a horrific injury on that. We can all agree. Certainly. Yes. Yes. Has a horrific injury. Gets not even out of the testing pool. It just doesn't even retire. I guess he got out of the testing pool, but they didn't pull them off the rankings because why would they decides to seek medical rehabilitation that I'm sure, you know, I'm guessing here. These are just my estimations. These are just my opinion. I don't know anything. But it appears, from what I can tell in my opinion, that he probably took stuff that was not USADA approved.

I'm sure it was under clear medical supervision. He can only afford the very best care that medical science can offer. It wasn't in keeping with what they wanted. He didn't want to seek their opinion about it. He had a horrible, horrible injury. He even talked about the fact that when this is all gone, I need to have quality of life. I need to be able to play with my kids. He didn't want to do USADA-approved rehabilitation.

And of course, who would? In fact, you can make an argument that if you play professional American football, by the way, that the Players Association should even be asking if growth hormone is a thing that'd be good for medical rehabilitation. Remember, Mikko Krokop using it for medical rehabilitation around his shoulder, right? Remember that? And ultimately ended up popping with USADA.

It didn't matter. He was retiring. It ended up being not much of an issue. But using growth hormone in a way that was not USADA approved, but it was certainly doctor approved, right? He didn't want to jump through those hoops. He didn't want to have to worry about that. And he's fucking right. There's been many things Conor McGregor has said that I hated. There's been many things Conor McGregor has done that I hated.

I'm not really, you know, I don't, I know I don't have any, um, I admire what he's done as an athlete. Certainly. Right. Like I was there at UFC two or five. That was a big night. he's done as an athlete, certainly, right? Like I was there at UFC 205. That was a big night. He's done big things. But I'm not somebody who just cheerleads everything Conor McGregor does. But when someone suffers a traumatic injury and says to themselves, you know what I'm going to do? I'm actually going to get the best medical care that I need for my quality of life,

for my future, for my family, for my sanity, for my own sake. And I'm going to let the chips fall where they may after that. Now that's a power move. You and I probably couldn't do that, but he did that and he was right to do it. USADA never really ever got the fighters to agree to anything. They didn't work with them. None of that was elective. Conor McGregor didn't sign up with USADA because he wanted to didn't sign up with USADA because he wanted to. He signed up with USADA because he was forced to. This is not VADA. This is not the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association or agency, whatever the last A stands for. It's not that. They were coerced into doing it. And when it was time for him to say, pause, I don't want to do

this anymore, he did. He did. And this apparently among a series of other factors has ultimately resulted in the UFC deciding to move on from them. Conor McGregor's contribution to the rights of athletes, to the, to what athletes should be able to get for themselves to their dude. Let me just Conor McGregor shows when they're powerful enough and they work together, make no mistake who runs this sport. It's the fighters. It's the fighters.

The fighters run this sport. That's a lesson. That's a through line through the entire course of Conor McGregor's career that's never changed. It's been there from day one. Who runs this? In his case, I run this is what he would say, but you know, the fighters run this. And that's been true whether he wanted more money.

That's been true whether he wanted, you name it. That's true when it also comes to taking care of his health after a horrific injury. And now look at the result. Now, I don't want to presume too much about what Conor did or did not do. I'm assuming it played a role. I don't know if it played the role, ultimately, in everything falling apart. But it was only through the circumstances, these back-and-forth media wars, almost, with USADAADA and Connor that I think caused some of that visible friction between UFC and USADA maybe the writing was on the wall remember when Daniel was like yeah ask Novitski about it I don't even care remember that that wasn't too

long ago that was not that was actually fairly recent so so yeah here we go. Phone is blowing up boys and girls. God damn. Um, you guys want a recommendation. Here's a recommendation. I'm going to show it to you one more time. There you go. The anti-doping crisis in sport causes consequences and solutions by two academics. Both of them. Uh, I think Werner Muller is, I want to say finish. Paul DeMille is Scottish. This is not a book that argues everyone should be allowed to do steroids all the time. That's not what it argues. But what it does argue is that anti-doping is basically built off the back of the institutions that have grown from drug hysteria. That is true, no doubt about it. And that anti-doping might serve some valuable

roles, but there A, should be athlete buy-in into any anti-doping program, and B, without it, it has vast overreach to the point where it's not accomplishing the mission that it set out to do while compromising the rights of athletes. This is the major contradiction that USADA always found themselves in that drove me nuts. They would act like they were the voice of the athlete. We speak for the athlete. We serve the interest of the athlete. No, you don't. You were never, ever, ever asked to be here by a single athlete. You were brought here by the people who kind of control the industry. Let's just be clear about that. You never got athlete buy-in. That's the first thing I'd say. But more to the point, how can it be that you're in athlete buy-in that's the first thing i'd say but more to the point how can it be that you're in charge of the rights of athletes to be clean athletes when you overrun their rights to privacy when you watch them nakedly shower in order to accomplish your mission it can't be both

right it can't be both you cannot say we in order to protect the rights of clean athletes whatever that's supposed to mean we're going to overrun the privacy rights and the rights to you know frankly judicious outcomes like where they had to change their pr policies like we're just going to announce every failure first even as there's mitigating circumstances. How can it be you have to disrupt one to have the other? Rights by definition are inalienable. It cannot be that they are in conflict in the way that they are describing. So it just tells you that this whole notion about the rights of clean athletes, what the fuck does that even mean? And prove to us you're actually making a dent in this. Prove it. Prove it. Prove it. Prove it. Prove it that your participation as a program meaningfully contributed

to the things you're talking about. Oh, well, we tested their blood and there was, what was it? The one they used, I think, on Rogan years ago. It was like they tested the blood and there was like less testosterone found over time. Yeah. What is it today? And that doesn't even mean anything anyway. That just means they could have stopped for a time. They could be right back on it. They could have changed what they're on more shouts to Derek of more plates, more dates. Who's been over this ad nauseum. There are any number of loopholes around that. Show me what they did worked. Prove it to me. Prove it to me. Been saying this for eight years fucking prove it to me and they can't so the lesson i wish to leave you with is not that there is no place for anti-doping in sport people often

think that what i want is no anti-doping i'm not one of these guys that needs it but if the athletes want it then they should have it they should have. But what has to happen is that the athlete has to bring it in. The athlete has to have a role in this policy. So let me say this. I don't know what the UFC is going to do. If they're going to leave it to the commissions, I suppose that's one thing. If they invite you, if they invite Vada and then the athletes, and there is peer pressure there, but if the athletes ultimately elect to use that service, I am perfectly okay with that. I'm perfectly okay with fighters buying into a system that they believe in, choosing to enter the system, having say, I'm okay with it. I'm perfectly okay with it. And

you should be as well, whether or not it works or not is a very different question, but at least you have that baseline buy-in process. You have the athletes being treated as partners at the table. They're all in this together. But that's not what you have with UFC and at least up to this point with USADA. That's not what you've had at all. You've had the exact opposite. And I hope that USADA has saved a little bit of money to help out Tom Lawler, who appears to have recovered quite well despite everything that they've done to fuck that guy. Make no mistake, dude,

what's the cost that they should have to pay for that? For just fucking his career up. What's the cost that they should have to pay for that? Nothing? Hmm? Zero? All the athletes have to bear the cost. Why shouldn't USADA have to bear the cost?

Because they fucked up big time. He did nothing wrong. Zero wrong. Utterly exonerated. And they fucking ruined his career. His MMA career, anyway career anyway never ever ever ever forget that so you wonder what the Legacy of USADA is to me it's a giant waste of everyone's time an organization that proved nothing about why the time they were here that got a lot of lip service

and definitely provided some social and catastrophe insurance the whole time. And the instant they're gone, no one is going to be asking for them back. Want to fucking bet? No one is going to say, Oh, it was so much better under that system. No one is going to say that no one, no one will be asking for that zero, none. And all the people who say, well, you have to have this in MMA. You have to have this. They're all going to still watch. They're all just going to be exactly the same way they were before. Guarantee it. Absolutely would bet my life on it. I never, ever bought that they were, had a principled stance about anti-doping and fighting. Just didn't believe it. Still don't. And I had every reason to believe what I did and here they are and by the way PFL calling like a huge portion of their roster to then bring USADA in now that UFC

going the other way is comical to the nth degree. What a tragic mistake that is. Tragic. Again, guys, what is so hard about VADA? I don't understand this. Boxers all use it. You don't see anybody complaining. Oh, well, there's people using all the time in boxing. Guys, they're going to use all the time no matter what. That's what you don't understand. Drugs win the drug war. But at least there, you would have a system that guys buy into. You would still have, they can test you at any time. You know what I mean? They can take a million samples. They take blood. They take urine. They do carbon isotope ratios

to all that stuff. They can do all of it too, at least though they have the athlete being like, I'm a participant in a program that I care about. Good for me. It's good for me. So, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out guys. Um, you know, never seen people who had a bigger, bigger savior complex than these dogs. These dogs walked in here and we're like, we are here too. I mean, look at this cesspool.

We're gonna, we're gonna fix this rightpool. We're going to fix this right up. First, we're going to fucking ruin your career. We're going to sully your name. We're not going to provide any data that any of this is doing shit, by the way. I just want you to know that for eight years. We're not going to provide a fucking document to that effect. We're just going to take your blood, take your urine. We're going to watch you wash your balls.

We're going to invade your privacy. We're going to do all of this. And then when we're gone, you'll have asked, what was the fucking point of it all? And the answer will be nothing. Congratulations to the USADA era. What did you accomplish? Nothing other than, you know, organizational aggrandizement. That's about it. So this is an interesting day. This is an interesting day. Let's see what UFC does. Let's see how they handle it.

Let's see if, let's see when Conor McGregor comes back. Let's see. And let's see what the folks say who hammered me day after day after day about how this was necessary for the sport to exist. Let's see what happens when they part ways. You know what's going to happen to them in terms of what their changes are going to be? Nothing. Nothing.

All right, folks. That's it for me on this rambling edition of Breaking News. My name is Luke Thomas. Hey, give me a thumbs up, sub, sub. Do what you got to do. Email me if you got the evidence, lukethomasnews at gmail.com. Please, by all means, hit me up. I've been waiting for eight years for this shit, so this ought to be good.

Yeah, we're back on Friday. I got my live chat tomorrow, but that should be a fun one as well. Lots to get to, lots going on. Thank you guys so much for watching. What a day it was here on mk 500 i'm out i'll see you guys next time peace