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St-Pierre: 'I know that (the UFC) knew' fighters were using PEDs

Jon P. Kopaloff / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Georges St-Pierre is adamant that the use of PEDs was common in the UFC at one point.

St-Pierre's frustration with the perceived lax drug testing inside the promotion was one of the reasons why he took an indefinite hiatus from MMA. Reflecting on a heated post-fight meeting with UFC brass following his final bout at UFC 167, St-Pierre realizes why the company potentially ignored the juiced up elephant in the room.

"Now that I look back, I know that they knew," GSP told Ariel Helwani on "The MMA Hour" according to MMAFighting.com's Dave Doyle. "I'm not stupid, I know it's business, you spend a million dollars promoting the fight, so they lose a lot of money. it's not in their best interest to make the drug test the best possible, because they lose money if the fight gets cancelled. So I told them it might take a year, you're going to lose money for a year because a lot of your main stars, a lot of your guys, will fall and test positive, they might hurt the image of the sport. But after a year, it will put back everything straight."

St-Pierre revealed on a recent episode of Chael Sonnen's podcast that the UFC unsuccessfully tried to stop him from attending the post-fight press conference at UFC 167, telling reporters the longtime welterweight champion was headed to the hospital.

During a break in the proceedings, a battered St-Pierre held a private meeting with UFC president Dana White and UFC co-owner and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta. To say the generally calm Canadian was fired up would be an absolute understatement.

"I'm not going to tell you exactly what was said," St-Pierre said. "But I was very pissed off and I used a lot of F words. ... I was very angry, they did not support me because of the testing issues for the doping, they did not support me for the anti-doping. And I told them, why they didn't support for this, and I didn't understand it. I said ‘you guys need to wake up, because a lot of people are cheating, and stuff, and it's a freaking joke. You guys are kind of protecting these guys, and it shouldn't be like that.' I was very angry."

After a few high-profile test failures in the opening stages of 2015, the UFC teamed with the USADA to create a more stringent drug screening program.

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