Of all the displays of incompetence and corruption happening right now with the California State Athletic Commission, you would be hard pressed to find a more curious example of stupidity than the way CSAC handled drug testing affairs at the Strikeforce event that took place last month in San Diego. The show was headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Sarah Kaufman.

Kathi Burns, the Department of Consumer Affairs lifer who is filling in as interim Executive Office, revealed this past week that only Kaufman and Rousey were drug tested for steroids/PEDs while no one else was tested due to ‘random’ selection. Uhuh.

Earlier in the week that the Strikeforce show in San Diego took place, there was an ill-fated power play attempted by Kathi Burns against front office workers Sarah Waklee and Brandon Saucedo. Both work in the front office and also work as lead inspectors for Northern California shows. Burns attempted to stop both of them from working as lead inspectors at future shows so that they would simply focus on working in the front office. A conflict of interest in doing both jobs was cited for the power play attempt. Within hours of this power play attempt, Waklee and Saucedo immediately got Burns to back down and we were back to status quo.

Burns then decided after her power play was neutralized to travel down to San Diego for the weigh-ins of the Strikeforce show in San Diego. The weigh-ins were supposed to happen at around 2 PM. The problem? No one was around from the commission for the weigh-ins, leaving Marc Ratner and the Showtime crew mad. Burns eventually showed up and the weigh-ins proceeded.

Burns has no experience in combat sports and is not a fan of combat sports, either. She simply has been a lifer at Consumer Affairs in Sacramento, floating around from place to place.

When it came time to drug test the fighters, only Rousey and Kaufman were drug tested for PEDs. It turns out that Burns, who allegedly has no experience doing drug testing, reportedly handled the testing process herself. What makes this so bizarre is that there were inspectors at the show who had worked or are working for the state’s Corrections department. If there is anyone who understands the chain of custody issues regarding drug testing, it’s individuals who work for Corrections. And, yet, Burns herself is the one who handled the drug testing.

After the samples were procured, they were sent to the UCLA drug testing lab.

The UCLA lab then called up Kathi Burns after they were given the samples and told her there was a problem with the labeling. They wanted direct contact with her since she was the one involved in procuring the samples. Once the problem was fixed, the testing proceeded to take place.

The end result is that the California State Athletic Commission claimed that both samples tested negative. The reality is that even if one of the samples had tested positive, it would have been nearly impossible for the commission to uphold a suspension against either Ronda Rousey or Sarah Kaufman due to the chain of custody issues that Kathi Burns created (fixable or not). No one, other than Kathi Burns herself, knows why she was the one who decided to handle the drug testing in San Diego.

The news of the botched drug testing protocols used by Kathi Burns broke because of an e-mail that Sarah Waklee sent out to MMA web sites. In the e-mail, Waklee reportedly claimed that the drug testing results were ‘invalid’ after being submitted to the UCLA lab. A few hours later, Kathi Burns sent out a note to the media stating that everything had been sorted out.

We’ve demonstrated that the Sacramento front office for the California State Athletic Commission can’t manage a box office, can’t manage an explosion of cheating regarding illegal hand-wraps and skinned gloves due to incompetence & a terrible 3 inspector per show policy, and can’t manage to maintain proper medical & licensing paperwork for fighters resulting in requests for altering documents. Throw in the botched drug testing situation at the Strikeforce show and what you have is a proverbial keg of dynamite waiting to explode.

Bottom line? The reason the Department of Consumer Affairs is doing absolutely nothing about the chaos at the California State Athletic Commission is because they are a big part of the problem. They’ve created an environment and fostered the political chaos that you are currently witnessing. The end game for DCA? They want the commission sunsetted.

Sunsetting the athletic commission does not mean shutting down combat sports in California. No, it’s actually worse than that. Sunsetting CSAC would mean that DCA would eliminate commission meetings for public consumption. DCA would take everything private and remove any sort of transparency that’s left. They would integrate even more of their bureaucratic lifers, none who have experience in combat sports, into regulatory affairs. It would only exacerbate the issues the commission is currently facing, not clean up the actual mess.

The last time the California State Athletic Commission was sunset, Armando Garcia got in big trouble and forced DCA to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit at the price tag of $75,000. Naturally, DCA replaced Armando with a man named Dave Thornton who cost DCA $750,000 in a legal settlement for a sexual & racial harassment lawsuit filed against him. This is the kind of leadership that would be on display by Consumer Affairs once the commission gets sunset.

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