USADA imposes first PFL suspension for doping tests against Gokhan Saricam

For the first time since the two organizations partnered, USADA has sanctioned a PFL fighter.

On Thursday, USADA announced that heavyweight Gokhan Saricam has been suspended for one year after failing multiple in-competition doping tests on April 29 and May 12.

Saricam, 33, was flagged for clomiphene, a hormone modulator that is banned at all times by USADA.

Since Saricam was not informed of his failure in the doping test until after the second test, the two violations will only be counted as one. Saricam will be able to compete again on April 29, 2025 – one year retroactively from the first failure.

Saricam, a seven-fight Bellator veteran, was scheduled to make his PFL debut on June 13 in a regular season bout against Danilo Marques, but pulled out of the fight. It is unclear if the drug test failure is responsible for his withdrawal.

Saricam has not yet commented publicly on the matter.

PFL and USADA collaborated exactly one year after the Saricam announcement, after the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) identified a series of doping test violations across multiple divisions.