UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy has been around for a long time, and he has seen a lot of things. The Army special forces officer was a guest on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani recently and discussed his displeasure with the current state of the sport, to the the point that he’s not interested in competing again unless it’s ‘something special’:
“Has to be something special. Fedor [Emelianenko] comes out of retirement and I fight him at a catchweight of 100 kilos. I’d be down for that.”
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“I have a conflict. My love for the sport isn’t going away. I’m just disappointed in the sport. I don’t know how to explain these mixed emotions where I’m like: every dude in my weight class is testing positive, everybody is cheating, judging still sucks, reffing still sucks.”
Kennedy has long railed against PED usage in MMA, and with the slew of recent positive tests, it’s become readily apparent that the sport has some major issues in that regard:
“There’s a crazy problem. The inevitable is gonna happen and where somebody is going to get seriously hurt and the person that caused that is gonna test positive and then the sport is … “
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“I’m talking about like something horrible, maybe even something gone wrong where a bad drug is used and something happens to the athlete before the fight and now his kidneys are failing and his liver is failing,” Kennedy said. “Guess what? That’s what happens when you use steroids. So yeah, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Kennedy (18-5, 3-1 UFC), who is coming off a disputed loss to Yoel Romero at UFC 178, is currently ranked at number eight in the UFC’s middleweight division.
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