Former UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida has admitted to taking a banned substance to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and his scheduled middleweight bout against Dan Henderson at Saturday’s UFC on FOX 19 in Tampa, Florida has been scratched.
The announcement of Machida admitting to taking a banned substance was announced by the UFC on Wednesday afternoon and the complete statement from the UFC is below.
The UFC organization was made aware today by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the independent administrator of the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, that Lyoto Machida declared the usage of a banned substance during an out-of-competition sample collection last week. Machida stated that he was unaware that the substance was prohibited both in and out of competition and, in accordance with the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, his disclosure of usage will be taken into consideration by USADA during any potential results management and adjudication process.
Given this information, UFC officials have elected to remove Machida from his scheduled bout against Dan Henderson this Saturday in Tampa, Fla. Henderson will be re-booked for a new bout in the near future.
Following the news of Machida being removed from Saturday’s fight card due to his situation with USADA, Machida released a statement on his Facebook page and stated the banned substance that he used was called “7-Keto.”
I’m here to tell you that I was caught by surprise by this news. It has been very difficult for me. I’ve trained a lot for this fight, I’ve dedicated a lot with all my team mates. I want to tell you that I really didn’t know about this substance, so I listed it on my declaration form amongst everything else I was taking, and this substance was recently banned in 2016, so I take the blame for not knowing that, and I’d like to say I’m really sorry and apologize to my fans, team mates, and my family… I always try to play by the book, but unfortunately this happened.
The supplement used by Lyoto was 7-Keto, that contains the substance DHEA, found in products sold at every supplement store and it’s very popular.
With this fight being removed from the event, the new co-main event of UFC on FOX 19 on Saturday at the Amalie Arena will be Rose Namajunas vs. Tecia Torres and the current fight card lineup is below.
Main Card: (FOX – 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m PT)
Glover Teixeira (24-4) vs. Rashad Evans (19-4, 1NC)
Rose Namajunas (4-2) vs. Tecia Torres (7-0)
Khabib Nurmagomedov (22-0) vs. Darrell Horcher (12-1)
Cub Swanson (21-7) vs. Hacran Dias (23-3-1)
Preliminary Card: (FOX – 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT)
Beneil Dariush (12-1) vs. Michael Chiesa (13-2)
Bethe Correia (9-1) vs. Raquel Pennington (6-5)
Court McGee (17-4) vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio (21-3)
Drew Dober (16-7, 1NC) vs. Islam Makhachev (12-1)
Preliminary Card: (Fight Pass – 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT)
John Dodson (17-7) vs. Manny Gamburyan (15-8, 1NC)
Randy Brown (7-0) vs. Michael Graves (5-0)
Cezar Ferreira (8-5) vs. Oluwale Bamgbose (6-1)
Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos (14-5) vs. Omari Akhmedov (15-3)