Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) flyweight champion, Henry Cejudo, defeated TJ Dillashaw at 125 pounds at UFC Brooklyn earlier this year on ESPN+, but hoped to rematch the bantamweight champion at 135 pounds at some point this summer.
Those plans just went up in smoke.
That’s because Dillashaw was popped by United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), as well as New York State Athletic Commission (NSAC), sending him to the sidelines for one year and docking him $10,000 for the transgression.
“I feel bad for him,” Cejudo told ESPN. “Obviously, you have your exceptions out there. Some people have been wrongly accused in the past. But people like Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones, and I’ve looked up to her in the past, they have to live with the regret and the dishonesty for the rest of their lives. I honestly feel bad for them.”
The promotion has a new disclosure policy on drug test results and will not typically release them until a judgment has been handed down. Dillashaw went on social media this morning to surrender his strap, but the cat was already out of the bag.
The banned substance has yet to be revealed.
“I want to reserve judgement, but I also want to say I never wish to [fight] anyone who uses PEDs again,” Cejudo continued. “There’s no place for that in MMA. This isn’t baseball or basketball. This is another human being with four ounce gloves hitting another human being.”
I believe the words he is looking for are “attempted homicide.”