2024 Contender Series winner Danylo Voievodkin won’t be making his UFC debut this year. In fact, he probably won’t be making it ever.
Voievodkin earned a shot at the big show last year, care of a rear-naked choke submission of the previously undefeated Bailey Schoenfelder on week seven of the series. However, on Thursday, the UFC, in conjunction with CSAD (Combat Sports Anti-Doping), who oversee the promotion’s Anti-Doping program, announced that Voievodkin had been handed a two-year suspension after failing a drug test.
The Ukrainian, whose own record sits at 7-0, tested positive for meldonium. If the name rings a bell, it’s because the drug was at the heart of a wide-ranging doping scandal that hit the Russian Olympic team, which also ensnared professional athletes from Russia and neighboring countries. Including tennis star Maria Sharipova.
In 2022, the drug constituted 14 of 57 banned substance cases among Russian athletes – according to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. Meldonium is not used in North America, but is prescribed in Russia, where it was developed, to treat coronary heart disease by increasing blood flow.
It doesn’t take a chemist to recognize the advantages increased blood flow might give a professional athlete. And, shockingly, it seems few professional athletes in the prime of their careers actually suffer from coronary heart disease.
That would include Voievodkin, who is just 24. According to CSAD, Voievodkin tested positive for the drug in an out of competition sample collected from him on October 17, 2024, in Vilnius, Lithuania. There were no mitigating circumstances, meaning the full 24-month suspension for the drug applies, backdated to that date. “The evidence in this case reflected that sometime after Voivodkin competed in his Dana White Contender Series event in September of 2024, where he was awarded a UFC contract, he used Meldonium after he was onboarded into the UFC’S Anti-Doping Program’s (UFC ADP’s) Registered Testing Pool,” Thursday’s press release reads.
Per an additional report by MMA Fighting, Voievodkin has been cut by the UFC.
