We’re just over a month away from Conor McGregor’s return to the Octagon at UFC 329 on July 11th, and not everyone is breathlessly excited for “The Notorious” to make his comeback.
The New York Times has been a leading source of negative news surrounding McGregor, writing lengthy exposés on the various legal troubles the Irish sports star has gotten himself into over the past decade. That includes the accused rape of hairdresser Nikita Hand in 2018, which McGregor was found civilly liable for in 2024.
They also tracked an alleged rape of a woman at a Miami Heat basketball game in 2023. A civil suit brought by that woman against McGregor was thrown out in 2025.
Now the New York Times has published an in-depth article that goes over McGregor’s use of performance enhancing drugs while rehabbing his badly broken leg.
“A New York Times investigation reveals that [McGregor] did take powerful, banned drugs, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter,” the New York Times article read. “And he did so with the support of one of the most prominent sports doctors in the world, according to the doctor himself.”
That would be well-regarded sports physician Neal ElAttrache, who told the NYT that he didn’t prescribe any steroids or hormones for McGregor, but had referred the former champ-champ to a specialist who did. ElAttrache then helped draft documentation to request a therapeutic use exemption for McGregor, which was denied by the UFC’s drug testing organization at the time, USADA. In response, McGregor ‘retired’ from the UFC, which allowed him to leave the testing pool and take whatever drugs he wanted.
McGregor’s use of PEDs during his rehab was a controversial topic, especially as “The Mac” very visibly packed on pounds of muscle. But it seems crazy to expect someone who has been horribly injured in a fight to not use all the medical treatments at their disposal. And that’s the attitude ElAttrache took when speaking to the New York Times.
“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 told the paper. “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.”
The New York Times also went into the sudden rupture between UFC and USADA that led to the fight promotion switching to Drug Free Sport International in 2024, and McGregor’s failed whereabouts tests following his withdrawal from UFC 303 that resulted in an 18 month ban from the sport.
Not mentioned: the fact that McGregor was the most scrutinized UFC fighter in history during the USADA era, having been tested over 70 times by the organization between 2015 and 2023. Following his five year break from the sport, DFSI isn’t giving him much of a break, either. He’s now been randomly drug tested 12 times in 2026.
It’s always good to see a mainstream outlet like the New York Times take an interest in the sport, and there’s certainly a conversation to be had about athletes being given leeway to rehab potentially career-ending injuries with treatments that are banned by extremely meticulous drug testing organizations. Is the Times being a bit biased in how it presents McGregor’s case? That’s for you to decide.
