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Hypocrisy ruined UFC 200

I’m upset. I’m upset because I didn’t write this article sooner. As soon at UFC 200 happened I felt that hypocrisy doomed the event and made it less of a spectacle as it should have been. But I held off. I wanted to be fair to the UFC. They did a great job with the cards they were dealt. Could it have been better? Sure, but it was still a very enjoyable night of fights so I held off.

But then it was announced that the UFC had been informed by USADA of a potential anti-doping violation from a sample taken before his fight at UFC 200.

Was UFC 200 an enjoyable night of fights? Yes. I honestly don’t even necessarily care that Lesnar probably used performance enhancing drugs, because that is the least surprising announcement in history – just look at the guy. But UFC 200 could have been so much better had it not allowed it’s own arrogance to get in the way.

Conor McGregor was pulled from UFC 200 for not going to a press event that none of the other top fighters went to anyway.


The original main event of UFC 200 was supposed to be the highly-anticipated rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz but in mid-April McGregor has a disagreement with the UFC about having to appear at a press event to promote UFC 200 and was removed from the card entirely. Meanwhile, neither Jon Jones nor Daniel Cormier were there and they were set to have their rematch as the replacement main event. Brock Lesnar nor Mark Hunt were there either. And neither was Anderson Silva, who ultimately replaced Jones against Cormier.

There was no real reason why UFC 200 should have been headlined by McGregor-Diaz 2 except for that Dana White was not going to allow a fighter to not do what he told them to do, regardless of how unnecessary the request was. In the middle of training in Iceland, the UFC wanted McGregor to make a nine hour flight to New York for a maybe two hour press event and then fly back. Meanwhile, McGregor is coming off his first major ins six years and his personal brand took a huge hit. In the grand scheme of things, making sure McGregor was training as much as possible would have been more beneficial to the UFC because he’s their star and another loss to Diaz would do more damage to him as the UFC’s mainstream star.

But even without McGregor-Diaz 2, the UFC had a great thing with Jones-Cormier 2 as their main event. That was until two days before UFC 200 it was announced that Jones was going to be removed from the card for a potential doping violation under a test by USADA.

UFC had to remove him from the card. It’s the rules, but if they wanted to banish their big star from the card for a PED violation, they never should have replaced him with Silva, another star who was just recently suspended for a PED violation. Sure, he served his sentence, but it’s very hypocritical to say as a promotion that you don’t want to award PED users with a spot on UFC 200 and then replace the guy with another PED user.

Jon Jones was replaced from UFC 200 for using PEDs with a guy who recently came off a PED suspension while another guy who tested positive for PEDs at a similar time remained on the card.


But what makes it so much worse now is that Lesnar, who was given an initial exemption to a PED test before he signed the contract, had a sample test positive for a banned substance right around the same time Jones did, yet Lesnar was allowed to stay on the card and his failure was announced after the event.

There isn’t much to say about how absolutely insane that is. The UFC has had problems with Jones in the past and wanted to make an example out of him. Meanwhile, Lesnar, who is still under contract with WWE and may never fight in the UFC again, was allowed to be the huge draw for the event and now he’ll be given a meaningless suspension later.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, it is likely that most fighters in the UFC use some sort of performance enhancer. Many who have tested positive for them don’t have any sort of true penalty either. Silva got a year off, came back and was put into a main event against Michael Bisping with a chance to get back into title contention and then got to be on UFC 200. Vitor Belfort has been given multiple title shots since he tested positive for banned substances. Dan Henderson is ready to fight for a title against Bisping. Rafael dos Anjos was just the lightweight champion.

Have any of these guys been treated like Jones? Of course Jones has plenty of other issues, but in the grand scheme of things people wanted to see Lesnar fight in the UFC so they let him stay on the UFC 200 card. But even though people wanted to see McGregor-Diaz 2 and Jones-Cormier 2, we didn’t get those fights at UFC and there is no real reason the UFC can give for taking them off that can make any real sense.

Maybe the sale of UFC to a new group is what is best for the promotion since there is no history, good or bad, between the fighters and new owners. UFC 200 is a perfect example of how the old regime kind of ruined something that could have been so much better than it was because of hypocrisy and their own agenda.

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Corey Johns

Editor in Chief

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