Dodgers and Rams head team physician Neal ElAttrache was questioned by Major League Baseball investigators Friday following a detailed report by the New York Times that the renowned surgeon and sports medicine expert supported the therapeutic use of performance-enhancing drugs by UFC star Conor McGregor.
MLB spoke with ElAttrache, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. The league considered the interview informational, not an investigation. The NFL, Rams and Dodgers declined comment.
“I have spoken with MLB and I am very comfortable with the process that the league and I will complete to assure the public that I have followed every rule and regulation in my medical treatment of athletes without exception,” ElAttrache said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “My record is completely clean, including in this case. I will leave it to MLB officials to provide any further comment as they see fit.“
ElAttrache performed surgery on McGregor in July 2021, inserting a rod, plates and screws into his left leg after the fighter broke his tibia and fibula during a bout against Dustin Poirier in Las Vegas.
McGregor’s recovery was lengthy and arduous. ElAttrache told the New York Times that while he did not prescribe steroids for McGregor, he referred him to a specialist who did. Furthermore, ElAttrache wrote a letter supporting McGregor’s request for a therapeutic use exemption from UFC drug policies.
“I felt it would be appropriate to consult other physicians with expertise in bone healing/bone metabolism,” ElAttrache told the paper via text. “I recommended the consultations but not the course of treatment.”
ElAttrache said he told McGregor to check with UFC drug testers about prescriptions the consultant gave him. “I purposely wasn’t involved with his evaluation by the consultant nor with prescribing medication,” ElAttrache said.
The exemption request was denied by USADA (the drug testing organization the UFC used then), triggering a split between the two organizations. McGregor withdrew from the UFC anti-doping program shortly thereafter and was no longer required to undergo testing for banned substances.
ElAttrache, operating primarily out of the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles, has performed elbow or shoulder surgeries on prominent current and former Dodgers including Shohei Ohtani, Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin and Walker Buehler as well as former Rams stars Cooper Kupp and Cam Akers.
Among the hundreds of surgeries performed over three decades by ElAttrache, his patients included the four 2024 MLB Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winners — Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal. ElAttrache’s patients include 18 of 29 players who won the MVP or Cy Young awards over the last 10 years.
Other prominent athletes who became his patients include former Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and star NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Joe Burrow.
ElAttrache was a boxer long before he became a renowned surgeon and team physician. He attended Notre Dame, where organized boxing was first introduced by Knute Rockne as a conditioning program in the 1930s. An intramural tournament known as the Bengal Bouts was formed and decades later ElAttrache became a champion, winning the 185-pound division in 1978.
Before world lightweight boxing champion Vasiliy Lomachenko returned from shoulder surgery to defend his title in 2019, ElAttrache counseled him against using his left hook because he wasn’t mentally ready to do so.
“When that arm goes into that position, the brain remembers that was the position where that dislocation occurred,” ElAttrache told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “It takes time to overcome that apprehension.”
It has taken McGregor five years since his injury to return to the octagon. He is scheduled to do so July 11 in a welterweight bout against Max Holloway at UFC 329 in Las Vegas as the main event of International Fight Week.
His recovery and startling physical transformation hardly a year after his injury became a frequent topic on social media. Fellow UFC fighter Anthony Smith said on Michael Bisping’s “Believe You Me” podcast in November 2022 that the reason McGregor pulled out of the UFC drug testing pool was obvious.
“There’s only one reason you would do that,” Smith said. “He’s looking jacked as s–. You keep seeing videos of him flexing in front of mirrors and screaming and he’s huge. He healed really fast. Like, really fast.”
On his show in December 2022, podcast host Joe Rogan noted McGregor’s impressive physique and the USADA testing loophole.
ElAttrache told the New York Times that he stopped treating McGregor after steering the fighter to someone who could obtain banned substances.
“I purposely wasn’t involved with his evaluation by the consultant nor with prescribing medication,” ElAttrache told the Times. He said “expert opinions” could help McGregor and “optimize his chance of solid union and healing of his fractures.”
Seeking the exemption, however, was viewed by USADA and some UFC officials as McGregor trying to find a way to use banned drugs. McGregor re-entered the drug-testing pool on Oct. 8, 2023, the same day UFC notified USADA that it would end the partnership.
Because McGregor had long been suspected of taking banned substances to revive his career, the Mixed Martial Arts community reacted to the New York Times investigation with a measure of closure.
“OK, it’s confirmed now,” co-host Conner Burks on the popular MMA podcast “The Boys in the Back said. “None of this came as a massive shock to me.”
“It seemed like the worst kept secret in combat sports,” co-host Eric Jackman said.
In a written response to a question posed by New York Times, McGregor’s manager, Audie Attar, did not say whether McGregor had used banned substances. He said that “even with surgery there was a real risk Conor might not walk again, a high likelihood he would face numerous lifelong side effects that would limit his mobility and serious doubts he would ever return to the octagon.”
Attar said McGregor withdrew from the UFC drug-testing pool “to focus fully on his recovery” under the care of “his team of world-renowned physicians.”
“They oversaw a combination of a gruesome surgery, intense physical therapy and appropriately prescribed medicines,” Attar said. “It is an unfathomable breach of health and privacy protections that my client’s purported personal medical records would be disclosed.”
McGregor attempted to return to fighting in June 2024, but a scheduled bout against Michael Chandler was canceled because McGregor broke a toe during training.
Combat Sports Anti-Doping officials were unable to locate McGregor for testing on the day the fight was canceled, and he missed tests on two subsequent occasions. Under the UFC Whereabouts Policy, the three failures constituted an anti-doping violation equivalent to a failed drug test.
The UFC suspended McGregor in October 2025 for 18 months because of testing violations. The suspension expired in June, clearing him to compete.
Times staff writers Bill Shaikin, Sam Farmer and Gary Klein contributed to this report.
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