Former UFC champ Anthony Pettis: USADA kept MMA fair, but most fighters will be happy it's gone

Former UFC and WEC champion Anthony Pettis sees positives and negatives to the dissolution of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) program.

USADA announced Wednesday that its anti-doping program agreement with UFC will expire at the end of the year. It hasn’t been announced if a new partner will be put in place or what the future of UFC drug testing holds, and Pettis has mixed thoughts on the situation.

As someone who was part of the UFC roster prior to USADA’s introduction in 2015, competed inside the octagon for most of its duration, and has now had fights in other promotions during his post-UFC run, Pettis has experienced it all.

Pettis thinks performance-enhancing drug use in the UFC was far more prevalent prior to USADA than it is today, but he thinks it reached that point by asking too much of the athletes.

“I think most fighters are going to like it (going away),” Pettis told MMA Junkie moments after USADA’s announcement. “There’s so much stuff that you’ve got to do to be part of that program. It kept the sport fair. Dudes are getting drug tested the night of the fight, before the fight, the week of the fight. There’s ways to do it, I think, to keep it fair. As the fighter, we had to update our whereabouts. We’re fighters – we’re traveling, moving around, training at different gyms. If you didn’t update your whereabouts (you got suspended). Little things like that I just think there’s a better way to do it. USADA, they’re a great company. I have no bad things to do say against USADA. But I think there’s other ways to do it. They’re not the only person who can do it.

“There’s just so many ways around it. You announce that you retire, USADA stops coming to your door. That’s a flaw right there. These guys are like, ‘I’m retired, I’m going to fight next year.’ I think where the sport was at when they first came in, they cleaned it up big time. The guys that I think were juicing, they had to figure something out.”

Pettis thinks the circumstances around the termination of the program is what could ultimately create the most angst among fighters. The looming return of Conor McGregor has become a hot-button issue over the past year, because before stepping back in the octagon, the policy stated he needed to submit two clean drug tests over a six-month period after re-joining the testing pool.

There is an amendment to the policy that would allow the UFC to waive the testing period and McGregor could become immediately eligible to fight, and USADA claimed clashing views over that point caused “untenable” friction between the two sides that contributed to failed negotiations on extending the agreement.

Pettis said it’s hard to ignore McGregor’s influence over how everything came to a head.

“A lot of fighters are going to be pissed off because it was about Conor McGregor,” Pettis said. “If it wasn’t about Conor McGregor and UFC was like, ‘Yo, as a business it just doesn’t make sense for us to use this company, we’re going to use a different company.’ I think it would go differently. But with Conor’s face on it and the Dana White privilege, people are going to get behind that. But when it comes down to it, it’s a business. And people want to see Conor fight.”

Although Pettis doesn’t fight under the UFC banner anymore, his preference is for the sport as a whole to be clean. It’s an impossible task, in his opinion, because no matter the degree of regulation, he thinks there are always avenues to cheating, and those determined enough will find them.

“I was fighting in the wild, Wild West days where drug tests wasn’t random,” Pettis said. “Unless you were fighting for a title shot, you probably wouldn’t even get a drug test. I’ve had both ways. The USADA way, it definitely makes me feel a little more safe that like, ‘The guy I’m fighting isn’t on some sh*t.’ If they want to get around it, there’s ways to get around it. There’s tricks and stuff that these guys have. When money is involved – you know.”