Twitter Mailbag: Sympathy for 'The Dragon'?

Lyoto Machida

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag, what are we to make of Lyoto Machida’s anti-doping program violation, and the fallout that followed it?

Plus, a man who says he died from MMA wants to do it again, while a man who actually did lose his life after a fight prompts some soul-searching about the nature of our sport.

To ask a question of your own, tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA.

Machida’s account of his own USADA violation is so unusual and specific that, in the absence of conflicting information, I’m inclined to believe it. According to both Machida and the statement issued by the UFC, his violation stemmed entirely from his own admission. Not unlike the blunder that brought Mirko Filipovic’s “martial times” to an end, Machida’s trouble precedes the actual drug test results. For all we know, he could have kept his mouth shut and possibly gotten away with it.

Where he wades into tricky territory is when he claims that the substance he took – 7-Keto DHEA – was only banned this year, which isn’t true, and wouldn’t matter even if it was. He also claims he didn’t know it was banned, when it takes about 20 seconds to download the banned substances list and find it with a keyword search.

But should there be a distinction, if only in our minds, between a fighter who takes an easily attainable, over-the-counter workout supplement and one who knowingly takes steroids or human growth hormone? I think so. The supplement Machida took is one that’s popular among bodybuilders and amateur athletes. It’s not something you have to get from a dude at the gym or a shady doctor at an anti-aging clinic. It’s right there next to creatine and amino acids on a lot of store shelves.

That’s not to say Machida should get a free pass. It was banned, he took it, and he has to take the blame. Still, when I see Dan Henderson, who was basically MMA’s patient zero when it came to testosterone-replacement therapy, tweeting that he has “no respect” for a guy who would take this comparatively innocuous supplement, I can’t help but think we might be getting carried away on this one.

Still, UFC fighters across the board need to wake up to the new reality. Stop grabbing whatever catches your eye at GNC. Stop downing supplements without cross-checking the very easy-to-use banned substance list. Stop thinking that as long as you’re not using a needle to get your vitamins, you’re fine. Those days are over, and they aren’t coming back.

Look to the last word of your very own question, and there’s your answer. Why? Why should B.J. Penn, probably the greatest lightweight of all time, come out of retirement to face Dennis Siver, who’s lost two straight? It feels empty, which might be why you feel empty just thinking about it. It feels like a fighter trying to stave off the inevitability of retirement by going after the easiest prey he can find.

Siver’s a tough guy, but at this point he’s nowhere near an elite fighter. He’s got exactly one win (that held up after drug testing) since 2012. Even that was against the debuting Charles Rosa, who took it on short notice and would probably beat Siver if they rematched tomorrow.

Point is, we can all see what this is. It’s a get-Penn-a-win fight. For the UFC, it’s an attempt to leverage his name and legacy for a few extra pay-per-view buys. For Penn, it’s an attempt to avoid thinking too hard about what his life will be like without fighting. It’s depressing, is what it is. So that’s why you feel depressed about it.

It probably has at least a little something to do with the fact that Khabib Nurmagomedov’s two-year absence didn’t come as the result of one major injury. Instead, his was a layoff that kept getting extended by follow-up injuries each time he tried to return. He was supposed to fight in September 2014, then in May 2015, then this past December, and each time he had to pull out hurt.

So at what point do we decide that he’s been away too long to just jump right back into action at the top of the division? That’s the problem here. There’s no magic number for cage rust. Plus, Nurmagomedov was on such a streak, with a title shot almost within reach, that you can’t blame him or the UFC for wanting to pick right back up where he left off.

And hey, maybe that would have been fine. Maybe Nurmy is the kind of dude who can roll in after two years away and steamroll a tough fighter like Tony Ferguson. I was certainly eager to see him try. But if that’s no longer an option, thanks to Ferguson’s injury, I can’t say it’s the worst possible outcome.

Maybe the lesson is that even when you take all the usual precautions and don’t do anything egregiously wrong on the officiating and regulatory side of things, this is still a very dangerous sport where very bad things can happen.

That shouldn’t surprise us. This is, after all, a sport built around two people trying to hurt each other. But it’s sometimes tough for us to accept that the inherent danger could also be fatal. We want to believe that we’ve trimmed down the risks of the sport with pre- and post-fight safety precautions to the point where no one will ever die doing it as long as all the rules are followed, but that’s just not true. You can die doing this. People have. People will.

To be fair, all we know right now is that the UFC has pulled the plug on the flyweight tryouts. That’s still a major disappointment for the flyweights who, upon hearing they were one reality TV tournament away from a title shot, booked travel to Las Vegas. As for what it means for the 24th season of the show, the UFC release said only that more information would be “made available in the weeks to come.”

Personally, I can’t say I’m heartbroken by the news. “The Ultimate Fighter” is the very definition of stale TV. If the UFC just never released any follow-up information, opting to let the show slide into the darkness without ever giving any reason why, it might be the most merciful possible outcome.

Funny you should ask. We looked into this topic back in November, when Valerie Letourneau was informed that she wouldn’t be able to have Hector Lombard in her corner for her women’s strawweight title shot at UFC 193 due to USADA’s “prohibited association” rule.

See, Lombard was serving a suspension for a failed drug test at the time. And the USADA rules ban athletes from working with any “athlete support person” who is serving a period of ineligibility. If you interpret that rule strictly, it would effectively drive suspended fighters out of their gyms until their suspensions are up. But according to USADA, that’s not how it interprets the rule for the UFC.

USADA officials also told MMAjunkie that, if they thought an athlete was in violation of the prohibited association clause, they’d inform them in writing first and give them a chance to make their case. The “spirit of the rule,” according to both USADA and UFC officials, is to keep fighters away from coaches and trainers and support staff who’ve been suspended for providing banned substances – not keep fighters from training and sparring with teammates who were busted for using banned substances themselves.

The problem is, the suppliers of PEDs are rarely outed in MMA. Even if they were, USADA and the UFC don’t have any real authority over most coaches and trainers. It’s hard to build a case against them if it can’t compel them to do anything. In other words, the prohibited association rule might keep a guy like Romero from cornering Jon Jones, which he wasn’t going to do anyway, but it probably won’t keep them from training together.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.