Former UFC strawweight title challenger Jessica Penne says that after years of stress and thousands of dollars spent battling her case, she fears her fighting career may be over. Penne (12-5 MMA, 3-1 UFC) said that she is currently facing a four-year ban from competition from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, following what the UFC’s official anti-doping partner has labeled a second infraction of the UFC Anti-Doping Program. In a lengthy post to Instagram , the 36-year-old Penne outlined a series of events that has kept her sidelined since an April 2017 loss to Danielle Taylor at UFC Fight Night 108 – and could potentially signal the end of a professional career that launched in 2006. View this post on Instagram To all of my fans and everyone who ever supported me A post shared by Jessica Penne (@jessicapenne) on Jan 10, 2020 at 11:00am PST Penne’s saga began, she said, with a doctor prescribing “an over the counter medication that balance out my extremely deficient hormone levels.” Unfortunately, while a pre-fight drug test administered before the contest was initially reported as negative, Penne became the first UFC athlete flagged following a review of her biological passport , which, according to the World Anti-Doping Association, is used “to monitor selected biological variables over time that indirectly reveal the effects of doping rather than attempting to detect the doping substance or method itself.” Penne was banned for 18 months, during which time she said she “kept my mouth shut and served my sentence” despite insisting she “did not knowingly break the rules.” While sidelined, Penne revealed she took to driving for Lyft and teaching private training sessions to make ends meet before finally being scheduled to return for a bout with Jodie Esquibel at UFC on ESPN 1 in February 2019 in Arizona. In a bizarre incident, Penne injured her ankle in a morning workout on the day of the fight and was forced to reschedule the contest to April 2019 at UFC on ESPN+ 8 in Florida.
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