LAS VEGAS – The bitter irony of UFC superstar Anderson Silva's defense against doping charges is that he would have almost certainly fared far better had he provided no defense at all.
Silva, 40, was suspended Wednesday by the Nevada Athletic Commission for one year, retroactive to Jan. 31, and fined $380,000 after failing a separate drug test both prior to and after his bout against Nick Diaz at UFC 183 at the MGM Grand Garden.
Silva admitted to taking Oxazepam, a benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety and acute alcohol withdrawal, as well as Temazepam. Also a benzodiazepine, Temazepam is a sedative-hypnotic used to treat insomnia.
He said he was prescribed those drugs by a physician in Brazil. He said he first took them late last year after he injured his sciatic nerve and spent a night in the hospital.
Silva testified that he took them again after the weigh-in on Jan. 30. He said he wasn't feeling well after the weigh-in and took the medication when he got back to his room.
Bizarrely, Silva also admitted to taking a clear liquid substance that was in a blue vial given to him from a friend from Thailand. Silva said he took it for sexual enhancement purposes. Several times throughout the hearing, he referred to it as either “Cialis” or “Viagra,” both of which are used to treat erectile dysfunction.
He tested positive in a Jan. 9 pre-fight screening, the results of which did not become available until after his bout with Diaz, as well as on the night of the fight. On the night of the fight, he gave samples both prior to and after his bout.
Silva, who had been outspoken about the usage of anabolic steroids among mixed martial arts fighters, denied taking any illegal substances. His attorney, Michael Alonso, hired Paul Scott, an expert in the anti-doping field, to determine how the drostanolone may have appeared in Silva's system.
Scott was provided with seven different substances that Silva said he had been taking as supplements prior to the bout. One of them was the liquid in the blue vial. Scott said he had that tested and it was positive for the anabolic steroid drostanolone.
Had Silva not had the supplements tested and simply denied knowing how they got into his body, as boxer John Molina Jr. did earlier, he likely would have gotten off easier.
Molina tested positive for furosemide, a diuretic, on the night of a March 7 loss to Adrien Broner in Las Vegas. Molina said he had no idea how it got into his system and suggested that without his knowledge or consent his nutritionist may have included it in something he ate.
The four commissioners present seemed to believe Molina and give him a lighter than normal penalty. He was suspended for seven months and fined 20 percent of his $425,000 purse.
The commissioners didn't find Silva to be forthcoming about his usage of the liquid in the blue vial he said he was taking to enhance sexual performance.
On his pre-fight questionnaire, he said he was taking no supplements. But at Thursday's hearing at the Grant Sawyer Office Building, Silva admitted to taking seven. He said he didn't disclose the use of the liquid in the blue vial because he was embarrassed.
But the commissioners clearly felt they'd caught him in a lie. He testified at one point that he had stopped taking it on Jan. 8.
However, commission expert Dr. Daniel Eichner, formerly the science director at the United States Anti-Doping Agency and currently the executive director of the Sports Medicine Research & Testing Laboratory in Salt Lake, said drostanolone would be out of the system after a week.
That raised the question if he had stopped taking it on Jan. 8 how it appeared in his system on Jan. 31. Silva then said he may have taken it once in the week before the bout, shortly after arriving in Las Vegas from Los Angeles.
There were several other inconsistencies in his stories and commissioners noted several times they didn't feel Silva was giving them the entire truth.
It was also remarkable that a fighter of his experience – Silva fought his first professional bout in 1997 and is regarded in some quarters as the greatest MMA fighter of all time – would admit to taking a substance in a bottle without a label prior to a fight.
