T.J. Dillashaw: Conor McGregor 'not doing anything wrong' by pulling out of USADA testing pool

Former UFC bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw agrees with Conor McGregor’s decision to remove himself from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency testing pool.

McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC), who broke his leg in a TKO loss to Dustin Poirier in July 2021, has not been tested in 2022. The way he looks bulked up right now has raised questions, but Dillashaw thinks McGregor made the right decision for his recovery.

McGregor would have to re-enter the pool and complete six months of testing before he’s eligible to compete again. So as long as his results come back clean in that time period, Dillashaw doesn’t care if McGregor has or hasn’t been using performance-enhancing drugs in his time away.

“We don’t have an offseason,” Dillashaw told Brendan Schaub on “Food Truck Diaries.” “We’re tested 365 days a year. You don’t get time to heal. You don’t get these down times. The guy is in movies, he’s doing all this sh*t, his leg is broken in half, and even if he were to take steroids to recover himself, he can’t compete with it in his system. So he’s not gonna have an advantage from taking what he’s taking. All he’s doing is healing. If you’re telling me that a guy can’t heal, who’s gonna make not only himself but the UFC hundreds of millions of dollars, that makes no sense not to. He’s not doing anything wrong.”

He continued, “I know he’s not fighting on the sh*t, so whatever. If he can heal the right way, he actually has a career – because I mean, you break your leg like that, you might never come back.”

Dillashaw (17-5 MMA, 13-5 UFC) is no stranger to being on the wrong end of USADA’s testing. The former two-time bantamweight champion served a two-year suspension for a positive EPO test in 2019 and was tested 25 times in 2021. He recently made the decision to retire after undergoing his third shoulder surgery in the past three years, raising questions about his own motivations for doing so.

Dillashaw, 36, did not entirely rule out a return to the UFC.