Sonnen: It doesn’t help to deny PED use
Chael Sonnen: “I don’t think it helps a guy to ever come out and go, ‘No no no. This was a one time … man they caught me on a bad…’ Call it what it is. You took it.”
Retired UFC fighter and current color commentator Chael Sonnen knows a lot about Anderson Silva, as he lost to him twice, and a lot about PEDs, having them ended his career. In an interview with Steven Crowder, Sonnen said he does not believe Silva was caught the one and only times he used PEDs.
“As soon as you test positive for something people will want to say it was over your whole career,” said Sonnen as transcribed by David St. Martin for MMAfighting. “My response is, ‘That’s fair. That’s a fair statement.’ If you get hit with something it runs you all the way back in time.”
“I don’t think it helps a guy to ever come out and go, ‘No no no. This was a one time … man they caught me on a bad…’ Call it what it is. You took it. You got caught. The end.
“We’ll see how Anderson handles it, but I think when somebody, at least for me, when somebody tried to say things, even when it wasn’t accurate, I think I still deserve it. If you test positive and somebody wants to run that back all the way to when I started my career at nine years old, I don’t think that guy’s wrong.”
Having established that he believes is it reasonable to question whether a fighter caught for PEDs was using previously, Sonnen was asked the obvious question – do you think Silva was using when they fought in 2010 and 2012.
“I really don’t know,” he said. “I can tell you this on Anderson Silva, the human body doesn’t get better with age. That’s reality. We start to decline as humans and particularly as athletes right around 25 years old. If you’re real lucky you might push that to 27 or 28. The good news is science and medicine have come along and decided the world does not belong to 18-25 year-olds, but that you can extend your career beyond that.
“If you’re asking me if he took something… There’s two tests that you take. The first test is not the urine drug test. The first test is the visual. When a guy takes his t-shirt off and gets in the ring or steps on the scale, you look at him. If a guy got better with time, you can’t do that on your own. Anderson Silva’s body doesn’t appear to have changed at all. So, a reasonable person would conclude that whatever he was on now, he was on before. But there’s no evidence to support that.”
Silva has flatly denied use of any PEDs. It is expected that he will be temporarily suspended at the next NSAC meeting, on Feb. 17. At that point a disciplinary hearings will be scheduled for March or April.