Anderson Silva allegedly tests positive for two different anabolic steroid metabolites
Well, MMAfighting is reporting that Anderson Silva tested positive for two different PEDs before his fight with Nick Diaz. I’m about as cynical as they come with regard to performance enhancing substances, but I have to say that I was taken aback by this one (I mean anyone could be juicing, but he just never had that type of physique). I am completely surprised that a fighter with as much of a legacy as Silva had would come back after such a terrible injury only to tarnish his legacy with this shit. While I was watching the fight I said something like, “You know, it’s really nice to watch high level MMA between two guys who are both not obviously juicing.” I guess it isn’t always so obvious, especially with older fighters. Honestly, it’s pretty upsetting. People are going to try to make excuses for him, as the partisans in MMA always do. I can hear them now. He was just trying to recover from a terrible injury. He’s old and a year or two ago would probably have just been on TRT. He may have never cheated before this. Whatever. First time he’s tested out of competition (or pretty close to it) and he got caught. For me, it really cheapens the legacy of a guy who I formerly believed got by on natural ability and skill.
Silva was caught on a January 9th test, which was out of competition. Unlike cocaine, anabolic steroids (drostanolone and androsterone for those of you who know what the fuck those are) are banned out of competition.
Needless to say, the Nevada State Athletic Commission has no fucking clue what they’re doing with regard to out of competition testing. First they test Jon Jones for cocaine, which he wasn’t supposed to be tested for, and which they can’t punish him for. Now they are testing so slowly that they let blown up welterweight and reefer-enthusiast Nick Diaz lock himself in a cage for five rounds against the with knockout artist of all time, to endure twenty five minutes of spinning shit, when he had just spent a training camp juiced to the gills. It is hard to believe that Nevada State Athletic Commission is testing guys for steroids three weeks before a fight, but not bothering to make sure that the test results come in before the fight. It is almost as though the negative test results are held back from the public until after the lucrative fight took place. That’s not that big of a deal in Jones’ case, I guess because cocaine isn’t performance enhancing, but I’m sure that Mr. Diaz isn’t too happy that the results didn’t come in before he got his eye shredded into a bloody mess. While one might suspect wrongdoing on the part of the commission, this is the United States, where the government is staffed by idiots who spend billions of dollars to get a buggy website up and running and this is the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which one might assume is stocked with incompetent cronies of the political class of a state whose main industry is legalized gambling. It could very well be nothing more than gross incompetence. Nothing will be proved and nothing will be done, but the stench of impropriety is thick.
The scary thing is that the NSAC is the most experienced athletic commission in the nation at regulating prize fights. They should be excoriated for failing yet again to do the most important job they have, which is to make sure that the fighters are safe (or at least as safe as one can be expected to be under the circumstances). The sport is still young, so hopefully they will figure it out sooner rather than later.