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OTTAWA – UFC middleweight Elias Theodorou interrupted his regularly scheduled workout for an urgent message.

He still doesn’t have permission to use medical marijuana.

Theodorou, who on Saturday faces Derek Brunson, said regulators want him to exhaust regular treatment options before giving the green light to cannabis. He said that includes fibromyalgia prescription Lyrica, opiods and painkillers.

Theodorou said he suffers from bilateral neuropathic pain and has used cannabis to treat his condition. But the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which administers the UFC’s drug testing program, forbids its use in competition, a window that starts noon the day prior to a fight and ends after a post-fight sample is collected.

Twenty months into a push to get the UFC’s first therapeutic exemption for marijuana, Theodorou still hasn’t given up.

“Unfortunately, it’s an outdated mindset I’m fighting,” he told fans before hitting pads for his fight at Canadian Tire Centre.

The UFC middleweight indicated he’s followed recommendations to use pharmaceuticals. But he said their side effects make it tougher to do his job. He gets bloated and constipated, which makes it tough to take a hit to the stomach.

“They’ve essentially agreed that I have the condition I have,” Theodorou said. “But they want me to do is exhaust all other medicine.”

Should he decide to break the rules, Theodorou noted the irony of being labeled a cheater over an opponent using a heavy-duty painkiller. He linked rules against marijuana to “racist propaganda” of the 1930s that said “people of a different color were getting superhuman strength because of cannabis.”

Cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive compound in the marijuana plant, is no longer prohibited by USADA. But the anti-doping agency still warns against the side effects of the plant’s psychoactive compounds and their synthetic counterparts.

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