Sherdog’s Top 10: PED Busts

Wanderlei Silva was alleged to have dodged a random drug test in Nevada. | Photo: Marcelo Alonso/Sherdog.com

2. Wanderlei Silva
UFC 175 “Weidman vs. Machida”
The entirety of the lead-up to UFC 175 was filled with PED-related issues. Vitor Belfort failed a random test in February, which led to his being pulled from a middleweight title fight with Chris Weidman that eventually ended up on UFC 175. Weidman faced Lyoto Machida instead.

Silva, who had coached against Chael Sonnen on the third season of “The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil,” was originally scheduled to face the American at the show’s finale. The fight was moved from Brazil to Las Vegas for UFC 175, and as part of the preparation, the Nevada Athletic Commission decided to randomly test both Sonnen and Silva. We have already discussed the results of Sonnen’s random test, but Silva flat-out refused to comply when the inspector showed up at his gym. Multiple reports state that Silva ran out the side door while the inspector was waiting for him, and while that might not technically be a positive test, it certainly counts as such in the books of the Sherdog.com staff.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NAC treated it the same way. Silva in June showed up for a preliminary hearing at which he claimed that he was taking diuretics to deal with the after-effects of a wrist injury sustained during his brawl with Sonnen during the filming of “The Ultimate Fighter.” Nobody seemed particularly convinced by that explanation. When the commission finally ruled on his case in September, it banned Silva indefinitely and dropped a hefty $70,000 fine.

The aftermath has been no less ugly, as Silva has traded both more- and less-justified barbs with UFC President Dana White, in particular, and the UFC, in general, and spoken out about the treatment of fighters in the sport as a whole. He even attempted to sign on with Bellator as a brand ambassador before the threat of legal action from the UFC stopped him. The downfall of an MMA legend has been quick and sharp, and the consequences will continue to reverberate throughout the sport for a long time to come.

Number 1 » He was stripped of the title, but officially the outcome of the bout remained a win on his record, which led directly to the NAC changing its procedures to allow for no-contests. More than that, however, the result also showed that mixed martial artists were in fact abusing performance-enhancers, and that he was only the tip of an iceberg, the true dimensions of which would be revealed in the years to come.