CHAD MENDES HAS become the latest victim of the UFC’s tougher stance on performance-enhancing drugs.
Mendes, who was knocked out by Irish fighter Conor McGregor in an interim featherweight title bout in July of last year, has been handed a two-year suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.
USADA [United States Anti-Doping Agency], which has been overseeing the UFC’s anti-doping programme since last year, announced on 10 June that Mendes had been flagged for “a potential Anti-Doping Policy violation stemming from an out-of-competition sample collection”.
Having conducted a full adjudication, USADA said in a statement released this afternoon that Mendes will be banned for two years for testing positive “for GHRP-6 [growth hormone-releasing hexapeptide] following an out-of-competition urine test conducted on 17 May.
“GHRP-6 is a prohibited substance in the class of peptide hormones, growth factors, related substances and mimetics under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, which has adopted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List.
“Growth hormone-releasing peptides are listed as Non-Specified Substances on the WADA Prohibited List. Under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, the standard sanction for an anti-doping policy violation involving a Non-Specified Substance is a two-year period of ineligibility.”
The ban will be back-dated to 10 June — the date Mendes received a provisional suspension — meaning the 31-year-old will be out of action until at least June 2018.
Mendes, an elite wrestler with a professional MMA record of 17-4, hasn’t fought since a first-round KO loss against Frankie Edgar back in December.
