The UFC has hit out at the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) for its statement on Conor McGregor this week, calling the agency’s words ‘false’, ‘garbage’ and ‘trash’. McGregor returned to the Usada testing pool on Sunday (8 October), as he prepares for his first fight since suffering a broken leg in July 2021, when he lost to Dustin Poirier for the second time in a row. However, Usada’s announcement of McGregor’s return to the pool was accompanied by a revelation that the agency would be ending its partnership with the UFC in January. Usada CEO Travis Tygart said the relationship between both parties had become ‘untenable’, and that he could not be sure whether the UFC would honour its stipulations when it comes to McGregor. In order to compete in the UFC, athletes must have been in the Usada pool for six months while returning at least two negative test results and zero positives. The UFC and McGregor hinted earlier this year, however, that Usada might grant the former champion an exemption. Tygart took exception to that suggestion this week. Now, the UFC’s Senior Vice-President of Athlete Health and Performance, Jeff Notitzky, and the promotion’s CBO, Hunter Campbell, have taken aim at Usada over this week’s developments. Campbell said at a press conference on Thursday (12 October): “At no point in time did Jeff, myself, or any other UFC representative, Dana [White, UFC president].... Not a single person ever went to Usada and told them anything other than Conor McGregor would reenter the program when he was healthy. “And in doing so, we would require him to be in the program for six months; there would be no exception to the rule. And what I said to Travis on multiple occasions, including the call on Monday, was there would never be a situation where Conor would fight until he had been in the program for six months, and my words were: ‘I don’t give a s*** if he has 37 clean tests.’ “[Conor has] conducted himself with integrity and honesty. He’s done everything right, and he’s – as you can imagine – very upset at the moment for the way that they’ve sort of used him. And they’ve never done that with any other athlete in history, and I think that’s a really important point. “I’ll say it one last time: What they’ve done to him is disgusting. And for an entity that holds themselves out to have a level of honour and integrity, using him as a media vehicle to advance a fake narrative is disturbing, disgusting, and I think they have some legitimate legal liability that they should be very concerned with. “They use him the way they have because he has allowed them to get a level of media attention that they can’t get on their own. Usada puts some s*** out, no one cares. You connect Conor to it, and all of a sudden it explodes, whether it triggers the algorithms or whatever. And truthfully, that’s why I’m most disappointed about the way that they’ve handled the last 48 hours. They used an athlete as a vehicle to advance a false narrative. I think it’s incredibly unethical – incredibly.” Meanwhile, Novitzky alleged: “The narrative that Usada put out yesterday is false, it’s garbage, trash. I can’t sit up here and come up with enough adjectives [for] what they said and what that’s done to this programme currently.” The UFC also said it would move forward with Drug Free Sport, which works with the NBA, NFL and MLB. The Independent has contacted Usada for comment. Click here to subscribe to The Independent’s Sport YouTube channel for all the latest sports videos. Read More Usada ends UFC partnership over ‘untenable’ Conor McGregor situation When will Conor McGregor return to the UFC? Alexander Volkanovski admits it’s ‘crazy’ to fight Islam Makhachev on short notice Usada ends UFC partnership over ‘untenable’ Conor McGregor situation Alexander Volkanovski admits it’s ‘crazy’ to fight Islam Makhachev on short notice When will Conor McGregor return to the UFC?

A few days before the GOP debate, Alyssa Farah Griffin tweeted her predictions for the big night

Cormac McCarthy, long considered one of America's greatest writers for his violent and bleak depictions of the United States and its borderlands in novels like "Blood Meridian," "The Road" and "All the Pretty Horses," died on Tuesday, according to his Penguin Random House publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He was 89.

It is a team from another time, a glimpse of Arsenal’s post-Wenger identity crisis and Mikel Arteta’s decidedly imperfect inheritance. There are David Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi, Dani Ceballos and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Alexandre Lacazette and Nicolas Pepe. They assume a greater pertinence now, and not merely as signs of the transformation of a side in three years. They remain the only Arteta side to beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, 2-0 in the 2020 FA Cup semi-final, courtesy of a brace from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Now, as Arteta’s current and former clubs prepare to meet at Wembley again, this time in the Community Shield, there is the probability that the Arsenal starting 11 will feature no survivors of one of the manager’s first major wins. Perhaps Kieran Tierney but Granit Xhaka, the last regular in Arteta’s strongest side, was sold in the summer. And while Emi Martinez left Arsenal and went on to lift the World Cup, few of the others have experienced better times since Arteta’s FA Cup win. Since that deceptively good start, the apprentice has begun to pose more of a threat to the master: in the bigger picture, anyway. Arsenal topped the Premier League for 248 days last season; their return of 50 points at the halfway stage put them on course, albeit briefly, to equal City’s record of 100. There was the danger that Guardiola had taught Arteta just too well. And yet the season ended with Guardiola having done different kinds of hat-tricks. There was the treble of trophies. There were also three wins over Arteta: 1-0 against a weakened Arsenal side in the FA Cup and, more emphatically and more importantly, 3-1 and 4-1 in the Premier League. It extended an increasingly impressive record in their private battles: the older man now has an 88 per cent win rate and eight victories against his old assistant. Among managers Guardiola has faced at least nine times, he only has a better record against Sean Dyche, Eddie Howe and Graham Potter, and the majority of those games came when they coached bottom-half teams, not supposed peers. Beating Guardiola over 38 games can entail beating him in two. Thus far this year, Arteta has another kind of triumph: he beat Guardiola to Declan Rice; Arsenal’s prime target attracted City’s attention and yet preferred the capital. Rewind three decades and the most coveted young midfielder outside the title contenders was courted by the top two, rejected Kenny Dalglish and Blackburn after a volte-face and signed for Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United. Which isn’t to say Rice is necessarily the next Roy Keane. But if Arteta spent last summer signing City’s squad players, in Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, pipping them to one of their targets felt they were conducting transfer business at another level. For City, Rice’s decision may have been a sign Arsenal are here to stay, that last season was not a one-off. It shapes the possibility that Arteta against Guardiola is the division’s new defining rivalry. If so, it would be the third to involve the Catalan, though the first, and most hyped, actually proved less compelling and enduring than the second. Guardiola against Jose Mourinho was a battle of ideas that the Catalan won and, even when the Portuguese won twice in charge of Tottenham, had lost some of its lustre. The knockout blow had already been struck as the ball was caressed around Guardiola’s midfields. Mourinho has the second most wins against Guardiola – seven – while coming off second-best in their feud. Guardiola against Jurgen Klopp had epic status for at least four seasons, between 2017-20 and then 2021-22. Twice they were only separated by a solitary point at the top of the table. Once, Liverpool knocked City out of the Champions League. Once, they knocked them off their perch as champions of England. The overall score stands at 8-7 to Klopp in one respect, with more victories in their meetings in this country, and 5-1 to Guardiola in another: they have shared the last six Premier League titles, but not equally. Liverpool’s second underwhelming campaign in three, albeit for different reasons in 2022-23 to 2020-21, prompts the question if, like Ferguson against Arsene Wenger, a previously even contest will become more one-sided and if this is a rivalry whose best days are in the past. Then there is the emerging rival in Arteta, lacking Klopp’s record of defeating Guardiola – something the German still did twice last season, including in the Community Shield – but with the more recent title challengers and the transfer business that has the stamp of ambition. Not every manager who runs Guardiola closest proves capable of overhauling him. Mourinho did in Spain, after finishing runners-up in LaLiga with Real Madrid. When his Manchester United came second, however, he was sacked by the end of the calendar year. The same fate befell Ole Gunnar Solskjaer three years later. If Arteta seems to have more staying power, as Klopp did before him, the next challenge is to overcome Guardiola over both 90 minutes and nine months. Read More Eddie Nketiah ready to step up again after Gabriel Jesus’ injury Arsenal striker Gabriel Jesus to miss start of season after knee surgery Arsenal transfer news: Raya, Balogun, Kudus, Pepe and more On this day in 2020: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang leads Arsenal to FA Cup glory Statue of former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger unveiled outside Emirates Stadium Arsenal’s Folarin Balogun set for Serie A move as Italian giants spark bidding war

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An acquisition company backed by serial dealmaker Martin E. Franklin has raised $550 million, exceeding an earlier goal

Dallas Keuchel carried a perfect game into the seventh inning before allowing a double to Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds, and Edouard Julien drove in a pair of runs for the Minnesota Twins in a 2-0 win against the Pirates

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