Jose Souza prepares for UFC debut after doping suspension struggles

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Jose Souza makes his UFC debut almost three years after first signing with the promotion – and after his life turned upside down due to a positive drug test that led to a long doping suspension. Souza – also known as Jose Henrique – is slated to face fellow UFC debutant Ding Meng on Saturday’s Fight Night show in Macau, China, and he opened up on the troubled times he endured since testing positive for two metabolites of the anabolic agent nandrolone back in 2023. “It was really difficult,” Souza told MMA Fighting. “I went through a lot of difficulties, a lot of bad thoughts, even thinking that I might never be able to fight in the UFC, but that only gave me more strength. It gave me the motivation to think, ‘I want to be there again, and I’m going to make it happen.’ And I did. I spent that time away working, waiting, training, giving my best every single day. That’s what gave me the strength to keep going, because I needed a goal, and my goal was to make it to the UFC.” Souza said he has never taken illegal substances in order to enhance his performance in the cage, but claims he was advised by a doctor to use Deca-Durabolin to recover from a knee injury. He had fought on Dana White’s Contender Series in August 2022, losing a decision, and was preparing to return to the Shooto Brazil cage in February 2023. “I had fought on the Contender Series, had gone through drug testing there with no issues,” Souza said. “I was clean, I had never taken anything. That’s the truth, I had never taken anything. I left the Contender, got out of the octagon and Sean Shelby and Dana White came to my locker room and said, ‘We like you. Go get a few fights outside and we’ll bring you into the promotion.’” “Right after that I fought at Shooto Brasil, and during camp maybe two or three weeks before the fight, I injured my knee training wrestling. I went to the doctor and he told me, ‘You don’t fight in promotions with drug testing so let’s use this medication.’ That’s when he recommended Deca-Durabolin to me, something used post-surgery that works very quickly. That was it.” Shooto Brasil is sanctioned by the Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA) and fighters are subject to drug testing, but the commission doesn’t tests all fighters on the card. “[The doctor] gave me the injection, and then shortly after that I fought at Shooto,” Souza said. “I knocked the guy out, [Andre Pederneiras] ‘Dede’ called Sean Shelby and said, ‘Look at this kid.’ Right there, when I got out of the cage, ‘Dede’ said, ‘You just signed with the UFC.’ It was that whole emotional post-fight moment. After my fight, I went to Russia with a friend who was fighting in ACA, and on March 8, they went there to test me.” Souza admitted he didn’t disclose the use of the substance upon signing with the UFC and being first tested by USADA “because the doctor had told me it would be out of my system in seven days.” “I didn’t tell Dede [about the use] and that was my mistake,” Souza said. “The blame is completely mine, I put all of it on my shoulders because I could have talked to him beforehand and he would have guided me toward better options. But I was thinking, ‘I want to fight, I need to fight, these guys are watching me.’ And that was it.” According to the UFC welterweight, “the doctor who recommended [Deca-Durabolin] didn’t want to get involved” in his defense in front of USADA, so he accepted the two-year suspension. A year later, Pederneiras asked for his release to be able to make money fighting elsewhere before trying to return to the UFC. Souza stayed active during suspension, competing for promotions that did not follow USADA’s bans. First, he defeated UFC veteran Leonardo Guimaraes in a boxing match, and months later scored back-to-back wins under the Centurion FC banner in 2024 to eventually earn a call back to the UFC in 2026. “[The UFC] had given me their word that after that year they would bring me back, and that’s exactly what they did,” Souza said. “They honored their word, and now I’m back. And you can be sure that I’ll be ready to show why I deserve to be in the UFC.” The 24-year-old Nova Uniao fighter had multiple matchups cancelled earlier this year, going from fights with Eric Nolan to Nikolay Veretennikov to Charles Radtke before ultimately agreeing to facing 35-9 Chinese veteran Ding in enemy territory. “I learned a lot from it all,” Souza said. “I needed to go through that. The first time I signed with the UFC, I don’t think I was ready. I was a very young kid, I had no real experience in life. I learned a lot from fighting on the Contender Series, but I still had a lot of maturing to do as a person and as an athlete. Today, I’m sure that I’m much more prepared to be a UFC fighter.”