Taila Santos enters the PFL cage Saturday night in Sioux Falls for her first bout back from a six-month doping suspension, and she said the failed drug test was caused by an “accident.”
Santos was scheduled to fight Julianna Velasquez before the positive drug test result for oxandrolone and clenbuterol in March 2025, and explained to MMA Fighting how the banned substances ended up in her system.
“My husband is a bodybuilder so he uses anabolic steroids,” Santos said. “We were rushing to go train and we get all our compounded supplements from the same place. In the rush, I ended up taking one of his by mistake.”
A former UFC title contender and PFL season finalist, the flyweight veteran said “it was a very difficult moment” in her career, “but I used that time to get things back in order, especially mentally, and at the same time enjoy my family a bit and not let it affect me.”
The 32-year-old faces off with Qihui Yan at PFL Sioux Falls and said she doesn’t expect the doping “incident” to be a stain in her career and reputation going forward.
“I think it’s something normal in the fight world, it’s part of the game,” Santos said. “How many athletes have already gone through this process, right? It’s like losing a fight. It’s a career incident, it happens.”
Santos vows to “leave it all in the cage” so this doping case stays in the past, and aims to beat Yan inside the distance. The Chinese veteran is 25-5 as a professional with only three wins coming by way of decision, and wasn’t expected to be her opponent.
According to Santos, she was first paired up against Viviane Araujo and then Ilara Joanne before inking a deal to face Yan in South Dakota.
“I didn’t know who she was,” Santos said. “When I got the offer, it was even hard to find some of her fights and videos to watch. I really had to dig around.”
Santos revealed she was focusing on sharpening her boxing skills when Yan came around and that ended up “fitting perfectly” as the ideal weapon for this kind of match-up.
“I saw that she doesn’t have a very defined style. She’s kind of random,” Santos said. “Some fighters are very strong in boxing or come in looking for takedowns right away. She seems more random. She comes forward throwing overhands, since she’s shorter, and tries to go for some takedowns, but there’s nothing that really stands out as her trademark.”
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