Several Power Slap athletes have been temporarily suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission after testing positive for various banned substances, awaiting a full disciplinary hearing.
Several Power Slap athletes have been temporarily suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission after testing positive for a variety of banned substances. The suspensions were authorized by Nevada Deputy Attorney General Joel Bekker and will remain in effect pending a full disciplinary hearing at a later date. Power Slap has been regulated by the Nevada Athletic Commission since 2022, and their events are typically held at the UFC APEX in Las Vegas.
The suspended athletes and their respective banned substances include T.J. Thomas, who tested positive for clomiphene; Jay Rivera, who tested positive for GW-1516, sulfone, and sulfoxide; Chris Thomas and Andrew Provost, who both tested positive for Buprenorphine and its metabolite norbuprenorphine; Isaih Quinones, who tested positive for Norandrosterone, drostanolone, tamoxifen, and boldenone; and Frank Holland, who tested positive for phentermine. Following the listing of the athletes and their banned substances, the commission approved their temporary suspensions pending a full disciplinary hearing.
In response to the long list of suspensions related to slap fighting bouts, Nevada Athletic Commission chairman Anthony Marnell said, “Is there like a big bowl of performance-enhancing drugs down there somewhere that I don’t know about? I haven’t seen this in quite a while. I didn’t know you needed to use steroids to slap but I guess we’re going to find out.” Ex-Nevada Commission chairman Stephen Cloobeck, who resigned from the commission after Governor Joe Lombardo was elected, later expressed regrets for his vote to approve slap fighting in the state, stating, “I made a mistake,” Cloobeck said about his vote in a statement sent to the Associated Press. “I’m not happy about it.”