UFC middleweight contender Tim Kennedy doesn’t have high hopes that upcoming title challenger Vitor Belfort will make it to his UFC 181 showdown with champ Chris Weidman.
In an interview with Bloody Elbow, the former two-time Strikeforce title challenger went off on The Phenom’s checkered past involving performance-enhancing drugs.
Okay, it’s one of two things; either he gets to use steroids-he’s training, has wonderful doctors that get him through it all-and he’s able to compete, barely getting through with his drug tests. There’s like a 1 in 10 chance of that scenario happening. The other factors are that he tries to be clean, and he realizes that he can’t compete. Or he tries to go clean and gets hurt. Or he just uses the steroids and gets caught. One of those 3 options are the likelihood of the other 90% … Vitor Belfort is not the old dinosaur or young dinosaur or whatever they call him. He’s a broken steroid addict.
Kennedy’s remarks echo exactly what ex-Strikeforce middleweight titleholder Luke Rockhold told Bloody Elbow last week, so it seems safe to say Belfort doesn’t have a lot of support from his fellow fighters about his December 6 title shot.
Belfort received a conditional license from the Nevada State Athletic Commission to fight “The All-American” late last month, as per Dan Stupp of MMA Junkie, despite failing a random drug test for elevated levels of testosterone in February.
The move received a ton of criticism among the fighting community, considering that Belfort had been an open user of testosterone-replacement therapy before the commission banned the treatment in February.
On top of that, the Brazilian slugger failed a drug test for the anabolic steroid 4-hydroxytestosterone after a decision loss to Dan Henderson under the PRIDE banner back in October 2006, as per MMA Weekly.
In the aforementioned interview, Kennedy referred to Belfort‘s licensing as “a horrible day for the sport.”
Kennedy, who is 6-1 since March 2011, is currently the No. 6 middleweight in the world, according to the UFC’s official rankings.
His sole setback came against Rockhold in July 2012, which was a Strikeforce championship bout.
The Greg Jackson’s MMA standout will look to make it five in a row when he squares off with surging prospect Yoel Romero at UFC 178 on September 27.
In the event that Belfort is unable to go against Weidman at the end of the year, would Kennedy—assuming he gets past Romero—be a suitable replacement?
John Heinis is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA editor for eDraft.com.
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