UFC fighter Irina Alekseeva suspended 1 year following bizarre drug-testing snafu

UFC fighter Irina Alekseeva won’t have to wait long to be cleared to fight again after the saga surrounding a failed drug test finally came to a conclusion on Tuesday.

During a monthly meeting with the Nevada Athletic Commission, Alekseeva received a one-year suspension after she tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone “consistent with the administration of testosterone of exogenous origin” from a sample collected all the way back on June 21, 2023.

The commission made the one-year suspension retroactive to Oct. 14, 2023 based on the date she was first notified about the test failure. Alekseeva’s one-year suspension ends on Oct. 14 so she’ll be cleared to fight again as early as Oct. 15.

She was also fined $157.04 by the commission for prosecution fees.

The strange timing surrounding Alekseeva’s suspension comes after the Combat Sports Anti-Doping (CSAD) — the in-house governing body overseeing the UFC’s anti-doping policy — placed blame on the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for delays in reporting the initial results that actually allowed the bantamweight fighter to compete after a failed drug test.

“Alekseeva tested positive for values consistent with the administration of testosterone of exogenous origin in a urine sample collected by the United States Anti-Doping Agency on June 21, 2023, while USADA was still the independent administrator of the UFC’s Anti-Doping Program (UFC ADP),” CSAD officials said back in June. “However, USADA failed to report the results of this sample to her and to UFC until Oct. 31, 2023, more than four months after the sample was collected and after Alekseeva was allowed to compete in a UFC event in Las Vegas, NV, on Oct. 14, 2023.

“USADA collected two additional samples from Alekseeva before her Oct. 14, 2023, fight, (Aug. 8, 2023, and Sept. 13, 2023) that were both negative. It should be noted that when CSAD took over the independent administrator role of UFC ADP from USADA on Dec. 31, 2023, it requested additional, more specific testing of those two samples that USADA had not. The results of this additional testing facilitated by CSAD were negative. Alekseeva was also tested by the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) on October 14, 2023, the date of her last UFC fight, and was negative. All three of these subsequent negative samples were collected from Alekseeva before she was informed of her June 21, 2023, positive sample.”

In the end, CSAD suspended Alekseeva for one year, which was also made retroactive to the day after her last fight in the UFC, which meant she would be eligible to return on or after Oct. 15.

Now the Nevada Athletic Commission has matched that same punishment with Alekseeva cleared to return once her suspension is lifted on Oct. 15.

The result in Alekseeva’s fight remains the same because she ultimately lost a decision to Melissa Mullins, which dropped her UFC record to 1-1 overall.

At the same meeting on Tuesday, Bellator fighter JayJay Wilson was also handed a nine-month suspension after testing positive for metenolone — an anabolic steroid — from out-of-competition drug test. His suspension is set to end on Jan. 1, 2025 and he was also handed a $157.04 fine by the commission for prosecution fees.