3dBrett Okamoto and Jeffrey Wagenheim
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Andreas HaleOct 7, 2025, 03:58 PM ET
- Andreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA, boxing and pro wrestling. In Andreas’ free time, he plays video games, obsesses over music and is a White Sox and 49ers fan. He is also a host for Sirius XM’s Fight Nation. Before joining ESPN, Andreas was a senior writer at DAZN and Sporting News. He started his career as a music journalist for outlets including HipHopDX, The Grammys and Jay-Z’s Life+Times. He is also an NAACP Image Award-nominated filmmaker as a producer for the animated short film «Bridges» in 2024.
Conor McGregor received an 18-month suspension from the UFC anti-doping program Combat Sports Anti-Doping (CSAD) on Tuesday.
His suspension will end on March 20, 2026, a little over three months before the UFC’s White House fight card that President Donald Trump announced would take place on his birthday, June 14. McGregor has been campaigning heavily to be included on the card, which would be his first fight in nearly five years.
CSAD, the in-house agency that runs the UFC’s anti-doping program, announced the suspension was for three «whereabout failures» in which McGregor missed tests on June 13, Sept. 19 and Sept. 20, 2024, and did not provide accurate information regarding his location.
«McGregor missed three attempted biological sample collections within a 12-month period in 2024, which constitutes a violation of the UFC ADP,» reads a CSAD news release on the UFC’s website. «UFC athletes are required to provide accurate whereabouts information at all times, so they can be contacted and submit to biological sample collections without prior warning. McGregor’s missed tests occurred on June 13, September 19, and September 20, 2024, and were each classified as Whereabouts Failures by CSAD under the UFC ADP.»
The missed test on June 13 was the same day that UFC CEO Dana White announced that McGregor’s scheduled fight with Michael Chandler at UFC 303 was cancelled. Although McGregor did not provide his whereabouts, CSAD noted that he was dealing with an injury and not preparing for a fight when the samples were supposed to be collected.
«Although McGregor failed to make himself available for testing on those dates, CSAD noted that he was recovering from an injury and was not preparing for an upcoming fight at the time of the three missed tests,» CSAD wrote in a statement Tuesday. «McGregor fully cooperated with CSAD’s investigation, accepted responsibility, and provided detailed information that CSAD determined contributed to the missed tests.
«Taking McGregor’s cooperation and circumstances into account, CSAD reduced the standard 24-month sanction for three whereabouts failures by six months. His period of ineligibility began on September 20, 2024 (the date of his third whereabouts failure) and will conclude on March 20, 2026.»
The suspension comes a day after McGregor announced on X that he would be taking an indefinite hiatus from social media. The former two-division champion is currently in the UFC’s anti-doping testing pool, with four samples submitted in 2025.
