Kennedy: Romero should be suspended for life
Jonathan Shrager for The UnderGround recently caught up with UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy for a no words barred interview.
Jonathan Shrager for The UnderGround recently caught up with UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy for a no words barred interview.
Fellow UFC middleweight Yoel Romero failed a PED test and was looking at the USADA mandated two-year suspension. However, Romero became the first UFC fighter to appeal a USADA suspension, and ended up with six months. The reduction was based on the argument that Romero took a tainted supplement. Given that fighters fight on average twice a year, the ultimate suspension was drastically less severe.
Kennedy talks straighter than a laser sight, and he was not impressed.
“When people ask me ‘did you leave because of that controversial loss to Yoel Romero?’ I’m like, yeah that sucked and that was ridiculous and horrific and that guy should never be allowed to fight again,” said Kennedy, as transcribed by Jed Meshew for MMA Fighting. “But no. It’s a business.”
“Yeah so at what point did we forget that this guy is a cheater? He’s cheated in every single fight he’s ever been in in the UFC. Every fight. You go back and look at every fight he’s ever been in he’s cheated. Then we find out he’s cheating by having stuff in his body that he’s not supposed to have. We know that it’s in there and that he’s not supposed to have it. And they say ‘okay hey buddy, you just cheated, like you’ve been cheating,’ and now we are going to take him at his word that supplements, that he supplied, he didn’t cheat in what they put in there?
“Every single possibility, whether he added them himself or that he knew that they were in there. The fight camp that he’s part of, you don’t think that they have a system for how to beat these and about how to get suspensions reduced? How to have supplements that they know are dirty? Or they buy supplements and then put stuff that they know would fail the test. They’re cheaters. They cheat. That’s what he has always done.
“This absolute, 100 percent, fits his M.O. No surprise to me. He’s a cheater. And the fact that they are still even considering him a contender is a disgrace to the promotion. And the sport.”
Tim Kennedy does not seek to speak out frankly about the UFC. He speaks frankly. He speaks out frankly about the military, and won’t shut up when an upset general calls him. He speaks out frankly about the UFC. And he speaks out frankly about his own Jackson-Wink fight time.
The team brought in Romero to help prepare Jon Jones for UFC 197 on April 23?. Kennedy understood that Romero was a good choice technically, but did not agree with the choice.
“I think it’s a bummer and I think it’s kind of disrespectful to Derek [Brunson] and I because Yoel cheated in Derek’s fight. He cheated in my fight. He cheated after our fights and he was probably cheating before our fights. I 100 percent believe that Yoel Romereo has been on steroids his entire career in the UFC if not even in the Olympics. And it’s a bummer that he’s at Jackson’s with Jon right now.”
Romero comes out of suspension this summer, and Kennedy would like to welcome him back.
“Yoel Romero is gonna come off his suspension early,” said Kennedy. “In July. That’s interesting. It’s disgusting. He should be suspended for life. And I’ve got to figure out if I’m going to fight him, can we get them not to give him stools or bags of ice or Vaseline or any other apparatus that he could cheat with? Because pretty much anytime you hand him something he’s going to cheat with it….So that would be an intriguing fight.”
Kennedy also expressed interest in fighting Vitor Belfort and Anderson Silva, who he noted sport a ‘dad bod’ since USADA instituted comprehensive, out of competition drug testing. And he offered to jump in vs. Dan Henderson when Lyoto Machida was out for using a banned PED.
‘I’ll fight tomorrow,” he said. “If you’re gonna have a middleweight fighter or even a light heavyweight fighter that’s maybe gonna get injured, coming off the card. Watch for my name popping up.”
Tim Kennedy