PFL’s Bruno Cappelozza gets second drug test failure and suspension in 14 months

August 12, 2024 3:15 pm ET

About a month after the organization announced its first suspension of a PFL fighter, the promotion’s new anti-doping partner has flagged another.

Bruno Cappelozza has been suspended for one year by the U.S. Anti-Doping Association (USADA), which oversees the PFL’s Anti-Doping Policy. USADA announced the suspension Monday. It is Cappelozza’s second drug test suspension in 14 months.

Cappelozza tested positive for clomiphene and the desethyl-clomifene metabolite from an out-of-competition urine sample collected April 17, USADA said in a release. Clomiphene hormone and metabolic modulators and is on the banned substances list. In July, PFL fighter Gokhan Saricam failed two different drug tests for the same substance.

Cappelozza’s suspension began April 17, making him eligible to return April 17, 2025. He was suspended in May 2023 when he failed a test for Drostanolone; he got nine months for that violation and returned this year.

Cappelozza won the PFL’s 2021 $1 million heavyweight season, but it’s been a struggled since then with a 1-2 record and a win tossed out because of his Drostanolone suspension. In February in the PFL-Bellator champ-vs.-champ event, he was put to sleep by a Vadim Nemkov choke.

PFL and USADA partnered exactly one year to the date of the Saricam announcement after the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) detected a slew of drug test failures across multiple divisions.

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