Saturday night, California State Athletic Commission Executive Officer George Dodd informed Sherdog.com that UFC middleweight title challenger Chael Sonnen had been notified of a positive test result for performance-enhancing drugs following his outstanding performance at UFC 117.
Many will take aim at the sharp-tongued Sonnen, who made comments about Lance Armstrong in the build-up to his bout with Anderson Silva that were viewed as out of bounds at the time and twist to being ironic and an easy joke in light of this news.
Some will begin the search for the next middleweight challenger, assuming that Sonnen will face a suspension and no longer be considered for his immediate rematch with Silva which has been penciled in for early 2011.
Others might address the history of fighters who have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in the past, maybe even detailing how their careers have played out pre- and post-positive test.
As well, there are bound to be a few pieces that wonder what the big deal is with PEDs in the first place? Sonnen isn’t the first to get caught, he won’t be the last and he’s surely not the only fighter who has been trying to get an advantage inside the cage from outside the standard regiment of hard work and training.
Though I would love to follow one of those angles, there is a more sobering storyline here that might otherwise get overlooked: If the reports are correct and the test is indeed positive, this is a massive blow for both Sonnen and the sport.
His numerous remarks and rants became must-see moments and immediate stories as he pulled no punches in attacking Silva, Ed Soares, the Nogueiras and others with his acerbic criticisms and comments. Left-of-center remarks about Armstrong, his fake / not fake Twitter account and his aborted candidacy for Oregon’s Legislative Assembly all garnered headlines, making Sonnen a household name and bringing him numerous new fans in the process.
Much of that will be lost with the news of his positive test. The history books will be rewritten; his epic performance against Silva will no longer be a Fight of the Year candidate, but a bout where the challenger took performance-enhancers and still couldn’t defeat the defending champion. Silva might even get additional praise for his win in the wake of Sonnen’s situation.
For the UFC and the sport as a whole, this news takes an instant classic and makes it a fight that some would sooner forget.
Everything about this encounter centered on Chael Sonnen.
He was the catalyst for convincing more and more fans to drop $50 on an Anderson Silva pay-per-view despite “The Spider’s” recent rash of disappointing performances.
He was the one delivering venomous commentary every chance he had leading up to the bout, detailing how he would punish Silva for his antics at UFC 112 and send the longest-reigning UFC champion into retirement after their bout in Oakland while taking pot-shots at countless others along the way.
Even in defeat, he was the one who came away from the bout as the biggest story and the greatest victor in the eyes of the public, backing up most of what he said and pushing Silva to the limit for four-and-a-half rounds.
All of that now has to be viewed in a new light and becomes easy fodder for the finger-pointers in the wake of Sonnen’s reported positive test. If the initial reports are accurate, six months of marketing and promotion was placed behind a fighter who cheated, and that surely won’t sit well within the UFC offices. The fact that a highly-marketable and probable pay-per-view monster just fell by the wayside won’t be looked at lightly either.
There are some who will question what the commotion about performance-enhancing drugs is all about in the first place. After all, we went through an entire era in baseball stained by steroids and come out okay on the other end, and Sonnen isn’t the first to fail a urine test following a championship fight. It’s 2010 – what’s the big deal?
In addition to re-writing the narrative about one of the best fights of the year, the sport is already facing enough obstacles that it doesn’t need to deal with the countless questions about steroid use and abuse that are sure to follow.
Opponents of the sport are going to eat this news up and drop it into their list of complaints about MMA, right next to “I find it repugnant” and “how is beating the crap out of another guy a sport?” When the biggest star of the year comes up tainted, the uneducated masses who paint in broad strokes are sure to consider everyone in the sport a steroid user, and that is an argument we don’t need to have.
Additionally, operating on the “lots of fighters are on steroids” angle doesn’t work either. While it may very well be the case – Dennis Hallman recently stated he thinks more than 50% of fighters are using steroids – until the alphabet soup of performance-enhancing substances are made legal, we shouldn’t be so willing to accept their inclusion in the sport, but that’s an entire article on its own.
This story is just coming to light and will surely play out in public over the next couple of days as Sonnen will eventually offer his comments on the situation and the court of public opinion will offer up an early verdict.
Finger-pointing and name-calling is easy at a time like this.
If the initial reports are correct and Chael Sonnen did use performance-enhancing drugs prior to his bout with Anderson Silva, let’s instead look at what we’ve lost as a sport and move forward in an effort to try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
An instant classic just became a scandal and a freshly-made star has a slew of new names to try on for size including cheater and hypocrite.
This is big news within the sport, but bad news for the sport, and we need to keep that in perspective as we take sides on the Chael Sonnen / Steroids in MMA debates that are sure to come.
UPDATE: Sonnen tests positive for high levels of testosterone.