Paige VanZant Suspects ‘Masculine’ Strawweights Are Using PEDs

Team Alpha Male prospect and 5-1 UFC women’s strawweight Paige VanZant has made a big splash in her relatively short time in the sport, becoming one of the most recognizable faces in women’s MMA and only two fights deep in to her UFC career. Currently booked to face Alex Chamber’s at this weekend’s (September 5., 2015) UFC 191, VanZant could be knocking on the door to a title fight before too long.

Women’s MMA is growing rapidly, but it also has faced some teething problems on the way, not dissimilar to the men’s side of the sport, in the form of performance enhancing drugs. We haven’t heard much in the way of steroid users in the young strawweight division, but ’12 Guage’ says that some of the women are just too manly to be clean. Marc Raimondi had the quotes from VanZant’s UFC 191 Media Lunch in LA:

“I will say some of the girls in my weight class have very masculine physiques, and I don’t know if you can get those naturally,” VanZant said at a media lunch Monday in Downtown Los Angeles. “I’m not a nutritionist, though, so I don’t really know. But I am happy that USADA is here and implementing the drug-testing policy.”

The new and much more stringent/frequent USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) testing has yielded many high profile results thus far, and the IV rehydration ban could well bust those trying to get fluids from a drip following weigh-ins. VanZant says steroid users mean little to her, as does the IV ban:

“I think about those things, but also the whole thing doesn’t affect me, so I just look at whoever my opponent is,” VanZant said. “If the strawweight division changes, it doesn’t matter as long as I keep continuing to win fights. Whatever my other opponents do, it has no affect on me.”

“If you’re relying on IVs, that’s obviously going to be a problem,” VanZant said. … “Some changes are gonna have to be made. I think that’s really going to be hard, because for the strawweights you can’t go up since there’s no 125-pound division in the UFC.”

Any female strawweights in the UFC that you think Paige VanZant is referring to here? Claudia Gadelha, Rose Namajunas, Carla Esparza, Jessica Penne, Tecia Torres and Joanna champion all make up the top end of the division, do you think they pass the new USADA ‘smell test’?

It’s likely that, if anyone uses in the future, they will be getting caught. Unless Dan Henderson’s prediction of more stealth steroid strains is accurate…