Poll: Has Your Opinion Of Anderson Silva Gone Down Since His NAC Hearing?

This past Thursday (August 13, 2015) longtime former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva was unceremoniously suspended for one year by the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) for failing pre- and post-fight drug tests connected to his UFC 183 win over Nick Diaz for anabolic steroids drostanolone and androstane along with anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills.

The suspension will date back retroactively to the January 31 bout, and even though Silva was forced to pay a ‘stiff’ total of $380,000 in fines, his punishment could have been a lot worse if he only appeared before the commission one month later when their new drug testing penalties go into effect.

Silva could certainly be back in the octagon next year; so it’s not his succinct penalty that has tarnished his reputation. No, it’s the way that he went about it, hiring a seemingly uninformed lawyer and an even more damaging ‘expert witness’ who had absolutely no documentation or specific proof that the ‘clear blue liquid in a blue vial’ was truly a sexual performance enhancer tainted with drostanolone.

‘The Spider’s’ defense also admitted to using the banned benzodiazepines, that much they did not contest even though the NAC routinely grilled him why he had not disclosed the seven supplements or the multiple medications that he admitted to taking during the hearing.

Silva and his team formulated this so-called ‘plan’ over the course of six months, and it was, to be blunt, simply embarrassing that is what they brought before the commission. He was never going to get off scot-free as his team probably hoped; yet it’s impossible to think that if he would have showed up, said he used PEDs as an aging fighter looking to come back from an injury that would end a lot of fighters’ careers and apologized, he would have been given the lowest penalty possible as a first time offender.

Instead, he showed up with a circus of a defense that not only got him the biggest punishment for a first-time offender, but he thoroughly embarrassed himself and bought his illustrious career into question when the commission brought to light that this was the only time he had been tested out of competition.

Taking all of that into account, has your opinion of Silva taken a turn for the worse since his NAC hearing?