Anderson Silva is in yet another Performance Enhancing Drug debacle.
The long time UFC Middleweight champion and MMA legend has failed an out-of-competition drug test administered by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and is out of the UFC Shanghai main event against Kelvin Gastelum later this month. The drug test was administered on a sample collected Oct. 26, and tested positive for an as yet unknown substance.
Silva, 42, is provisionally suspended from UFC competition and now facing a full suspension from USADA, pending the adjudication and results management processes. However, many fans are frustrated, not shocked, as Silva also failed a drug test for anabolic steroids drostanolone and androsterone in an in-competition test in taken for his fight with Nick Diaz at UFC 183 in January 2015. For that violation, Silva was suspended one year by the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC).
The reason for such a lenient sentence was that Silva denied he had knowingly taken the substances, instead testifying the commission that the steroids had been ingested through a male-enhancement product from Thailand.
The ‘tainted supplement’ alibi has been used by many fighters, most notoriously Jon Jones, to explain the presence of banned substances in their blood. This excuse has a certain amount of plausibility. There are many products, both athletic and male enhancement supplements, which contain performance enhancing compounds banned by USADA. However, the athlete is still must be responsible for his body and everything he ingests.
Lance Armstrong, when he first tested positive, simply did research and found a product that contained, but did not list, the substance he had tested for. The point is, it’s almost impossible to prove that an athlete ‘knowingly’ ingested a substance.
BothJones and Silva have each had multiple positive tests, and with so many fighters on the roster who have never tested positive for anything, it tests the imagination to believe these repeat failures are due to simple bad luck.
USADA could take into account Silva’s previous drug-test failure and hand down a strict, career ending sanction. But the show goes on. Micheal Bisping, the Middleweight champion deposed by Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217 has stepped up in a stunning two-week turnaround to fight Gastelum on Nov. 25 in Shanghai. That card is the UFC’s first in mainland China.
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