Chael Sonnen predicted that Wanderlei Silva wouldn’t step into the octagon with him. He later reported that the Axe Murderer had run from an emissary of the Nevada State Athletic Commission seeking to test him for banned substances.
t turns out the American Gangster was right on both counts. He just had to spoil his record as a truth teller by flunking his own drug test.
Silva’s lawyer told the Nevada State Athletic Commission at a hearing yesterday that his client had indeed used a banned substance, which caused him to avoid an NSAC contractor randomly showing up at his gym to administer a test. But instead of human growth hormone or steroids, Silva relied on a diuretic, his lawyer says, to make weight for his 205-pound fight with Sonnen at UFC 175. Silva competed well below the light heavyweight limit in five of his last six matches, which include three bouts at middleweight.
“He walked up to the front desk and I followed a little way behind him,” Jim Guernsey, an independent collector of urine and blood samples for such tests, told the NSAC of his encounter with Silva. “He went into an office in the middle of the gym and came out after just a few seconds. He walked back to the front counter and then walked past the office toward the back of the gym and went around the corner to the right. I casually followed behind him, and when I turned around the corner I realized there was an exit there and a bathroom. I didn’t see him anywhere. I went into the bathroom and looked around and didn’t see him there.”
Tuesday’s hearing, which involved little in the way of talk from the subject the discussion, meted out no discipline. Sanctions will likely fall at a later date. The doomed UFC 175 main-card matchup has witnessed Chael Sonnen suspended, Wanderlei Silva facing similar punishment, and his replacement Vitor Belfort admitting elevated testosterone levels from “therapeutic” use of the hormone.
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