(The youth of Russia: finding new and innovative ways to abuse performance-enhancing drugs.  Hope you’re taking notes, American children.)

We were hoping that the official explanation behind Kirill “Baby Fedor” Sidelnikov’s positive steroid test would be physique-related, but it looks like we lose this particular MMA betting pool.  The increasingly shady organization known as M-1 sent out a statement today ascribing the positive test for Stanozol to “a nose spray commonly used in Russia” to treat complications from a broken nose.  

Damn.  We never would have guessed nose spray, but now that we hear it we can’t help but feel like we shouldn’t be so surprised to find out that certain chemical treatments commonly used in Russia might contain anabolic steroids.

The statement itself is a true marvel of linguistic acrobatics, as it manages to express support for Sidelnikov while also conveniently distancing M-1 from any hint of wrongdoing.  For example:

(Yeah, the doughy dude on the left. Crazy. Photo courtesy of Esther Lin.)

Bad news via MMA Mania:

You may remember Sidelnikov as "Baby Fedor," the trusted Emelianenko training partner who went into a heavyweight match against Paul Buentello at Day of Reckoning looking like he should be competing at middleweight, and got raped. Between his performance and his appearance, he’d be the last guy we’d suspect of having a chemical advantage. And yet he pissed dirty for a synthetic anabolic steroid derived from testosterone. This world is full of surprises.

Dollars to donuts he’ll be using Tim Sylvia’s patented "I was only using it to trim my physique" defense, which will probably be good enough for him to compete again in Russian MMA leagues, where they don’t even care that Aleksander Emelianenko is competing with tainted blood. But from our view, this might cast some suspicion on Fedor himself. The WAMMA champ and his protege trained together every day — might he have been aware that Sidelnikov was cutting corners?