There is no other way to put it: Anderson Silva is deluding himself.
The former UFC middleweight champion, whom some knowledgeable experts still consider as the greatest mixed martial arts fighter of all-time, faces perennial contender Michael Bisping on Saturday in London.
Silva will be fighting for the first time since a bout with Nick Diaz at UFC 183 on Jan. 31, 2015, in Las Vegas. He was suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission following the fight after testing positive for several banned substances.
The anabolic steroids drostanolone and androstane showed up in his post-fight test. Silva comically said at a disciplinary hearing that he got the substance from a friend in an unmarked vial to assist him with sexual performance.
On a conference call to promote the fight, Silva tried to paint himself as a victim. He said his attorneys “looked like clowns,” during the hearing, which they did. But he said he spoke of his sexual problems in an attempt “to prove my innocence.”
This is where Silva goes off the rails.
Think about what he said: He took a substance he got from an unnamed friend in Thailand that came in an unmarked blue vial. The friend told him that it would assist him with his sexual performance problems and so he took it, no questions asked.
Really?
Silva made millions of dollars in the UFC and has access to the best doctors in the world. If he were having a sexual performance issue, he could have easily, and discreetly, seen a doctor and got a valid prescription to help him.
Instead, he admits that while he saw his doctors before the Diaz fight and got a prescription to help with anxiety issues and sleep problems that wound up causing him to test positive for Oxazepam and Temazepam, he didn’t ask his doctor for help with his sexual performance issue. And as luck would have it, that blue vial contained anabolic steroids.
Silva’s explanations don’t make sense.
His testimony during the hearing was comically inept, and he simply kept digging the hole deeper as he attempted to cover up the issue.
The incident also brings his entire career into question. Silva had been outspoken throughout his career in his opposition to performance-enhancing drugs, which only made it more stunning when he was caught with them in his system multiple times.
Looking at his physique, few would have suggested he was one of the many in the UFC who was abusing PEDs.
But now we at least have to consider that a possibility in light of his test failures prior to and following UFC 183 and his dubious explanations.
Silva tested positive on Jan. 9 and then again post-fight.
He said at the hearing he quit taking the substance in the blue vial on Jan. 8. But when there was expert testimony that showed that drostanolone would have been out of his system within a week, Silva suddenly remembered that he might have taken it once more the week of the fight.
Given how lax he seemed to be with the truth, and how his sequence of events kept changing, do we not at least have to think that he’d done this before when testing wasn’t so strict, or frequent?
During his conference call comments, Silva urged testers to take samples from him as often as they’d like. He’d have to be a complete fool to be cheating now, so it’s a hollow vow.
Silva seemed to be the epitome of what a fan would want a mixed martial artist to be: He was respectful and diligent in his training, opposed to PEDs and talented beyond words.
His fight with Diaz was his first since returning from a gruesome broken leg he suffered in 2013 at UFC 168 in a rematch with Chris Weidman for the middleweight title.
Mentally, that had to be a huge hurdle to overcome, stepping back into competition after having had his leg essentially snapped in half with a kick.
Had he said at his hearing that he took the drugs because he was concerned about the health of his leg, it still would have been a violation, but it would have at least made sense. Few would have held it against him long-term.
But instead of that, he tried the sexual performance defense. This seemed to be an attempt to minimize the violation while still taking blame himself.
Chael Sonnen is one of the worst cheaters in UFC history, but when the one-time middleweight contender was finally caught, he at least admitted all of his lies and came clean.
Silva didn’t have the decency to even do that.
Instead, he attempted to insult the intelligence of those who for years saw him as a decent and honorable man by making outrageously bizarre claims.
Silva said during the conference call he has “a dream that I’m going after and that’s to get that belt back and I’m going to do it.”
He doesn’t deserve in any way to fight for the title, not with a first-round knockout of Bisping or anything else. He actually hasn’t won a fight at middleweight since UFC 148 on July 7, 2012, when, ironically, he stopped Sonnen in the second round.
Since then, he beat Stephan Bonnar in a light heavyweight non-title bout, lost twice in championship fights to Weidman and had his fight with Diaz declared a no contest after both of them failed drug tests.
Bisping was angered, and rightly so, after Silva had the gall to try to put himself in the title picture.
“And I just want to say something: Yes, we’re all chasing the dream,” Bisping said. “You know, all fighters have a dream, a dream of being the champion and you got to do it through hard work and determination. The fact of the matter is Anderson Silva tested positive for not one, not two, but three banned substances inside his body. While I respect him as a fighter, I’ve got to say I lost a lot of respect for him for that and this fight represents me beating all of these people that want to cheat assisted.
“I have never taken a performance-enhancing drug in my life and anybody that does should be ashamed to call yourself a martial artist. To take performance-enhancing drugs is the biggest contradiction you could ever make and to be honest, he should be ashamed of himself and I feel that this should be talked about more.”
Bisping is the man that fight fans often love to hate.
No doubt, however, he is 100 percent on the money in his take on Silva.
It’s sad that Silva chooses not to recognize that and give an honest and accurate accounting of what happened once and for all.
