As Conor McGregor approaches his highly anticipated return fight next month five years after fracturing his tibia and fibula, his recovery is being called into question.
The New York Times reports that McGregor, who took himself out of the UFC drug testing pool after he suffered a nasty broken leg injury in July 2021 against Dustin Poirier, “took powerful, banned drugs” that his surgeon, Dodgers and Rams physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache, supported in a letter as McGregor applied for a special exemption.
The belief from officials overseeing UFC’s drug-testing program was that McGregor’s request for a therapeutic use exemption was meant to “exploit a loophole,” according to the Times. He never got the exemption.
McGregor left the UFC’s highly strict USADA testing pool in 2022 and didn’t return until late 2023 when he was preparing for his return fight against Michael Chandler in June 2024.
ElAttrache told the Times that he recommended consultations with specialists in bone healing, “but not the course of treatment.”
“You are acting as if ‘banned drugs’ are somehow ‘illegal drugs’ or that they have no legitimate therapeutic use and only have performance enhancement use,” ElAttrache said. “There are many ‘banned drugs’ on the list which are necessary to medically treat various conditions which occur in people. That is why a therapeutic use exemption application exists.”
One source told The Post that the allegations McGregor took powerful performance-enhancing drugs to recover from such a nasty injury were “not surprising” — but ElAttrache’s comments were shocking.
The UFC and USADA’s relationship ended after the end of 2023. The UFC now oversees its own anti-doping program in conjunction with Combat Sports Anti-Doping (CSAD).
McGregor’s camp did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Reached by the Times, McGregor’s manager, Audie Attar, didn’t say whether McGregor used PEDs but said “even with surgery there was a real risk Conor might not walk again, a high likelihood he would face numerous lifelong side effects that would limit his mobility and serious doubts he would ever return to the octagon.”
Regarding McGregor withdrawing from the testing pool, Attar said McGregor did so to focus on his recovery with “his team of world-renowned physicians.”
“They oversaw a combination of a gruesome surgery, intense physical therapy and appropriately prescribed medicines,” Attar told the Times. “It is an unfathomable breach of health and privacy protections that my client’s purported personal medical records would be disclosed.”
Last October, the CSAD announced an 18-month suspension for McGregor due to three missed tests within a 12-month period. The suspension was backdated to September 2024 and concluded in March.
Typically, doctors have a recognized fiduciary responsibility of “doctor-patient confidentiality” and must not disclose anything related to treatment.
After he left the testing pool, McGregor made some interesting comments.
“The state of allowance for athletes to recover from injuries as horrific as the one I overcame must be assessed,” McGregor said in 2022.
McGregor, the former 145-pound champion in 2015 and 155-pound champion in 2026, reportedly weighed between 190 and 210 pounds while filming was ongoing in 2022-23 for his Hollywood debut in “Roadhouse” alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, right around when he left the testing pool.
McGregor flirted with the idea of fighting at 185 pounds, but will fight Max Holloway at 170 pounds on July 11 in Las Vegas, his return to competitive fighting after five years away following the devastating injury.
