On April 27, in the main event of Bellator 220, Bellator welterweight champion Rory MacDonald will attempt to defend his title against former World Series of Fighting champ Jon Fitch in the final, first-round bout of the Bellator Welterweight Grand Prix.
Speaking to Robin Black and DAZN ahead of this fight, MacDonald’s coach Firas Zahabi, the main behind Tristar MMA, went off Jon Fitch, calling him a cheater and a coward.
“You know Fitch got busted for steroids,” Zahabi said (transcript via MMA Mania). “That’s why he had a resurgence. He’s better now than he was before. He had a dip, then he had a surge.
Firas Zahabi is most likely referencing a 2015 incident when Jon Fitch failed a drug test under the World Series of Fighting banner.
“Jon Fitch was tested positive for PEDs, Performance Enhancing Drugs, and he’s had a major resurgence in his career,” Zahabi continued. “In my opinion, let’s be honest, he’s a cheater. We’re not a group of guys playing golf here, we’re not playing soccer. We are hitting each other. We’re not hitting soccer balls, we’re not hitting baseballs, we’re hitting each other. It’s highly immoral, it’s a crime in my opinion, and the truth is, he’s not as good as people think he is. He’s really just a cheater. Because if I take a guy and give them testosterone, he’s going to be really good too… so in my opinion, this is a highly objectable contest, because I know, I feel it for sure, if he did it in 2015, here we are and it’s 2019, and he’s in a title fight, of course he’s gonna do it. But we don’t have USADA or VADA testing in Bellator, we only have the testing the week of the fight, which is very easy to get around. So in my opinion, Fitch, he’s not an authentic fighter.
“This guy’s a coward, he’s a cheater,” he concluded, wrapping up a fiery tirade. “At the end of the day he’s a true coward. He’s not a competent fighter in my opinion, he’s really just a guy on a lot of juice. He’s a good wrestler, yeah, I’ll give him that. But really he’s just a guy on a lot of juice. I could take an average wrestler and give him testosterone and he would be competitive. The truth of the matter is, he can’t win without it, that’s the truth.”
This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 4/18/2019.