While watching UFC 125 to start off the New Year I saw one of the worst three round beatings in recent memory as Thiago Silva beat on Brandon Vera like he stole his favorite toy. For fifteen minutes Silva overpowered Vera and literally had his way with the grown man. Now, two months later, information has come to light that makes what we watched in the Octagon null and void.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission declared that Silva’s urine test was “inconsistent with human urine.” Tests had shown that the BJJ Black Belt had tampered with his sample in some unstated fashion. While specific details have not been revealed, it was assumed that Silva was the next professional athlete to be popped for a banned substance.
However, Silva tried to jump out in front of that train and release a public statement. In this statement he not only admits to taking a foreign substance, but to tampering with his urine sample to try to pass the blood test. He points towards a serious back injury that caused problems, forcing him to take a banned substance rather than pull out of the January bout with Vera.
The rule in dealing with a banned substance accusation in sports seems to trend a few ways. Either you: a) Deny until you are blue in the face; b) come up with a new type of disorder that causes you to need treatment; c) say you didn’t know what was in your supplement; or d) apologize for it. Silva has decided to go with option D and apologize to his fans, Vera, and other individuals in the community. Still, I have to ask, is he apologizing because he is sorry, or just because he’s sorry that he was caught?
Think about it this way, if Silva took the time to use the banned substance and then do whatever he did to try and mask it, then he must have planned to get away with everything. Why else would he have gone out of his way do such a thing? My opinion is that his intention was to never get caught in the first place. Now that he has been ousted, the reaction of option D was his best bet; apologize and hope that it counts toward the public reaction. However, I am not fully taken in by his attempt to gain forgiveness.
Performance-enhancing drugs do not have a place in sports, especially in mixed martial arts, where your main objective is to hurt your opponent as much as possible. Other fighters, such as Sean Sherk, Josh Barnett, and others, have fallen under the specter of using illegal supplementation. However, I believe that across all sports the penalties for such actions should be worse. In MMA, a fighter who is willing to endanger his or her opponent in such a way should face a harsh response. If Dana White was willing to cut Paul Daley for his actions, he should drop the hammer on Thiago Silva for doing much worse.
