Dominick Cruz: Lesnar 'Absolutely Doping,' Won’t Make it Past USADA

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Fight fans were treated to a bit of professional wrestling histrionics on Saturday night, when former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champion and WWE superstar Brock Lesnar entered the Octagon to call out newly-minted heavyweight champ Daniel Cormier at UFC 226.

Moments after Cormier’s first-round knockout over Stipe Miocic, Lesnar stormed the cage and cut one hell of a promo, but not everyone is so optimistic about Lesnar’s UFC return. Specifically, Fox Sports MMA analyst and former UFC bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz doesn’t think Lesnar will even make it past USADA’s notoriously stringent drug testing.

“If he makes it to the fight I’d be shocked,” Cruz told San Diego’s Scott & BR Show (via MMA Mania). “And I just mean that because USADA is the toughest anti-doping system there is on planet Earth, and that guy is absolutely doping. Period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. And he’s not been in mixed martial arts, so of course he’s been doing that stuff. How they’re going to get him to be clean on fight night is beyond me.”

Lesnar re-entered the USADA testing pool this month after retiring following a failed PED test after UFC 200 in 2016. Lesnar had defeated Mark Hunt by unanimous decision, but that result was overturned once Lesnar’s failed test results came to light weeks after the fight. The WWE star returned to professional wrestling after UFC 200, where there is no sanctioning body to oversee steroid and performance enhancing drug use.

The former champion isn’t eligible to fight against until January 8, 2019 at the earliest, and then only if he passes all of his USADA-administered drug tests. While in the lead-up to UFC 200 Lesnar benefited from an exemption that allowed him to compete without the requisite time in the USADA testing pool, it seems unlikely he will receive a similar exemption this time.

If Cruz is wrong and Lesnar does make it through the gauntlet of PED testing, he will apparently be next in line for a shot at Cormier’s heavyweight belt.