NSAC head responds to ludicrous claims of cover up
“I have 24 years in the FBI. To think someone could get me to close my eyes to a positive test, to risk someone getting hurt, that conspiracy theory is …”
When it was announced three days after the fight with Nick Diaz that Anderson Silva had failed a PED test, nearly everyone in the sport was shocked. And it when it came out that the test had been administered 22 days before hand, there was further shock, and dark speculation that the Nevada State Athletic Commission had withheld the results until after the fight.
The suspicion was that the fight made the UFC and Nevada a lot of money, and so the commission, headed by retired FBI agent Bob Bennett, must have sat on the results or otherwise finagled a delay.
Bennett was baffled by the muttering, and in an interview with the excellent Lance Pugmire of the LA Times, characterized it as ‘ludicrous.’
To think for one second that we would consider that — maybe it’s mother nature for some negative people to think that way — it’s ludicrous, said Bennett.
I have 24 years in the FBI. To think someone could get me to close my eyes to a positive test, to risk someone getting hurt, that conspiracy theory is … we would never do that.
It had been taking them about seven to 10 working days to get us back the results. It should have been done in 10 days, [by Jan. 26, counting the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday]. But this one took 17 days. … You live and learn.
Bennett said that going forward samples will me marked as expedited, an option that is available, but was not taken in this case.