Six weeks after making fun of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) intravenous rehydration ban, UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo has changed his mind.
The Nova Uniao fighter told the Brazilian media in July he would continue to rehydrate that way despite the change of rules regarding rehydration process, and challenged USADA to find out he did it.
“I will continue to do IV, I don’t care,” Aldo said in July. “I’ll tell them I’m going to eat and do it instead. They won’t take me out of the f—ing fight, so I don’t care. They can say whatever they want, but it’s scientifically proved the best way to rehydrate. Only if they put security guard with me 24 hours a day. I don’t care.
“That’s what’s going to happen. I will do it anyway, or someone else will do it for me. I will go to a friend’s house, to a different hotel room. I don’t f—ing care about them. They won’t take me out of the fight anyway. They can’t take me from the fight. It’s not doping. They will say they will test me. How are they going to get IV rehydration from my urine, brother? Only if they got new techniques. They are ninjas. They are f—ing stupid.”
Aldo and his team later met with UFC antidoping specialist Jeff Novitzky and UFC president Dana White, and said he was joking when he made those comments, and blamed media for mistranslating his quotes.
“Sometimes I say something to the journalists in Brazil, and the moment the guys translate that, my interview is almost totally wrong,” Aldo told the media recently in Las Vegas. “Everybody knows if you have the rules, you need to follow the rules and do exactly what you need to do.”
Aldo plans to respect the new anti-doping rules under the USADA control when he returns to the Octagon on Dec. 12, facing interim champion Conor McGregor in the main event of UFC 194 in Las Vegas.
