(HOW DO I REACH THESE KEEEEDS?! Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

By George Shunick 

Matt Mitrione’s recent controversy isn’t the first time a fighter has opened his (or her) mouth and said something stupid. It’s also not the first time a fighter has been punished by Zuffa for doing so. Due to the seemingly arbitrary manner in which punishments were handed out, and the ambiguous definition of offenses deemed unacceptable, there has long been a need for a basic code of conduct for UFC employees and athletes.

This was finally realized earlier this year, and the new code of conduct was made public one week ago. In fact, it’s been used by UFC Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Lawrence Epstein as a means of persuading the New York State assembly to recognize MMA as a legitimate sport, and the UFC as a legitimate organization on par with the NFL and MLB. But while it marks a progressive effort on the part of the UFC in establishing ethical guidelines for fighters, it’s still prone to the same criticisms of favoritism that the UFC has endured due to its past disciplinary discrepancies.

The first section of the code of conduct regards criminal offenses; specifically, “the use or threat of violence,” “domestic violence,” “theft,” “sex offenses,” “obstruction or resisting arrest,” “disorderly conduct,” “fraud,” “racketeering,” and “money laundering.” Most of these should be pretty obvious offenses. What is less clear, however, is whether or not a fighter has to be convicted of these offenses to be punished for them.

(And this is the face he will make after he does.) 

Since being released from the UFC following his second positive test for marijuana in his past three fights, TUF 7 alum Matt Riddle has been doing his damnedest to burn every last bridge that might possibly connect him to the organization he has literally built his entire professional MMA career in. And while Riddle succeeded in raising some interesting questions regarding the UFC’s policy of hiring and firing fighters during his recent interview on The MMA Hour, he also succeeded in completely sabotaging any potential of a return trip to the sport’s highest promotion, which according to him, is something he would prefer:

What I see happening is, a year or two from now the UFC calls me back after I’ve won probably like five or six fights, hopefully. And I’ll probably, at the time, say, ‘No.’ Because I really don’t like the direction they’re taking the company. They’re firing high-level talent so they can have lower level talent just scrap, and they’d rather have a brawl than a good technical fight. I think that’s going to be their downfall, because the fans are getting more educated. They’re getting smarter, and they don’t want to just see a slugfest and two retarded guys with brain damage bleeding everywhere.

Dana White’s response was expectantly blunt. Get it? Blunt? Be honest, that pun is so great you’d probably beat your kids in a fit of jealous rage if you weren’t so goddamn stoned.

Much more from this interview after the jump. 

(Negative side effects of TRT: Bacne. Positive side effects: Falcon Punch.) 

My God, today’s NSAC meeting, which determined both Chael Sonnen’s future ability to continue legally injecting steroids testosterone replacement therapy and Nick Diaz’s minimum retirement length was like watching Lawrence of Arabia, twice, minus all of the train explosions and shots of interesting desert landscapes. To describe the six hour hearing in a word: humdrum. Thankfully, we’ll be much briefer in summing up what went down.

To kick off the afternoon, Sonnen was successful in achieving a therapeutic use exemption for testosterone replacement therapy, and now joins the like of Dan Henderson, Todd Duffee, and Shane Roller in the select group of MMA fighters to receive an exemption from the Nevada State Athletic Commission. As far as interesting developments go, Sonnen admitted that he injected himself with testosterone, stating, ”I administer two times a week, every Sunday and Thursday. It’s self-injected intermusculatory and [I] consider it to be a prescription.” When Commissioner Pat Lundvall asked why Sonnen had never listed using testosterone on his medical forms over the past few years, Sonnen stated that he was under the impression that it wasn’t something that needed to be disclosed. He also stated under oath that he “has never taken anabolic steroids.”

In another interesting moment, which took place before the hearing truly began, Keith Kizer likened TRT to “the new Viagra” as doctors continue to push it on the population and that “Therapuetic Use Exemptions do not allow you to test outside of normal ranges. It only allows for presence of synthetics.” Does this make Sonnen TRT’s Smiling Bob? Only time will tell.

(Boxing: Making MMA fans since 1996)

The World Boxing Council yesterday handed down a stiff punishment to heavyweight Derek Chisora for what they have termed “one of the worst behaviors ever by a professional boxer” in the months and days leading up to and the hours after his February 18 championship bout with Vitali Klitschko in Munich.

(If you ask me to do the Techno Viking dance one more time, I’m shoving that glove up your ass.)

When Keith Jardine lost his Shark Fights debut against Trevor Prangley last weekend, effectively racking up his fifth straight loss, it didn’t seem like things could get much worse for the struggling former UFC light heavyweight.

It appears it did.

Jardine has been suspended indefinitely pending a disciplinary hearing for allegedly shoving a Texas Combative Sports Program official prior to his main event fight Saturday night.

(Most realistic wax sculpture ever?)

Depending on how many times you’ve been hit in the head lately, you may or may not remember the brief, but furious little dust-up about Sean Salmon’s claim that he had allowed himself to be armbarred in a fight this past June in order to avoid damage and keep his job as a Wolfslair sparring partner.  The way we saw it, Salmon admitted to quitting in the fight, not throwing it, and he was guilty of nothing more than screwed up priorities and extremely bad judgment.  The Ohio State Athletic Commission decided it was a little more serious than that, and they suspended Salmon for a year and fined him $2,500 for his transgression.

Fortunately for Salmon the suspension is retroactive to the date of the fight, so he’ll be eligible to compete again in June of 2010, but the damage to his reputation may last much longer than that.  The punishment seems extreme, particularly when you consider that Salmon really only hurt himself by both giving up on the fight and then telling the entire MMA world about it.  Had he just taken the loss as learning experience and not written a column offering up an excuse for it, this wouldn’t have been necessary. 

(Parisyan was also "strongly encouraged" to get an eyebrow-wax. Photo courtesy of UFC.com.)

It seems like our earlier post on today’s Penn/St. Pierre NSAC hearing contained a bit of foreshadowing. Yes, fights in Nevada can be overturned if one of the fighters was using banned substances, and Karo Parisyan just learned that the hard way. "The Heat" was busted last month after testing positive for three different painkillers following his three-round snoozer with Dong Hyun Kim at UFC 94. Well, the verdict has finally come down, and Parisyan has been nailed with a nine-month suspension, a $32,000 fine (40% of his total purse), and the official voiding of his split-decision victory against Kim. That fight will now be known as a "no decision," which means that Kim is still technically undefeated. As Sherdog reports:

(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?

(Photo courtesy of 5oz.)

Following his bust for three unapproved painkillers following UFC 94, Karo Parisyan was hoping to take his suspension and try to move on with his life. Unfortunately, he’s still stuck in punitive limbo, as he was informed in a Nevada State Athletic Commission hearing yesterday that a final decision regarding his positive drug test won’t be announced until next month. Though Parisyan is still under a temporary suspension, his actual suspension will be retroactive to January 31st; in other words, it won’t begin on the date that the final suspension is determined, which is good news. Still, the uncertainty isn’t exactly helping the Heat’s panic-related issues. As he told MMA Junkie:

(Photo courtesy of MMA Weekly.)

The California State Athletic Commission came down hard on Antonio Silva for flouting his steroid suspension and fighting in Japan last weekend, but they also proposed to fine and suspend his manager, American Top Team’s Alex Davis, for setting up the bout.  Davis isn’t taking the action lying down however, as he told us this afternoon that he plans to pursue the matter in civil court.

“We’ve got to.  I don’t see any other options at this point,” said Davis, who maintains that he can prove Silva’s innocence on the steroid charges.  “We’re going to go through civil court.”

Davis described the CSAC’s action against himself and Silva’s cornermen as an attempt to “extend their jurisdiction to the whole world,” and said Silva was motivated by financial necessity to take a fight in Japan after the CSAC turned down his appeal on the steroid charges.

“Antonio has acromegaly.  He has to treat it.  He spends between $6,000 and $8,000 a month just on medicine for it,” Davis said.  “He needs to be able to keep fighting to make a living.  If it’s between Antonio’s health and pleasing the athletic commission, we have to choose his health.”

(The hell of it is, the fight was no good anyway.)

We knew that Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva was making himself an enemy of the California State Athletic Commission by flouting their suspension and fighting in Japan anyway this past weekend, but we didn’t know that he might also have condemned the friends who aided and abetted him.  

The CSAC is setting a February 10 hearing date to decide what to do about Silva, who claimed from the beginning that he was the victim of faulty steroid testing, but they’re also going after his cornermen and his manager, American Top Team’s Alex Davis, for negotiating the fight.  Dave Meltzer says Davis has been fined $2,500 and suspended for the remainder of his license for setting up the bout, and the CSAC’s Bill Douglas is notifying all athletic commissions about Silva’s cornermen and the assistance they gave to this fugitive from steroid justice.

Sounds like Bill Douglas comes from the Keyser Soze school of management.  He’s not just punishing Silva; he’s punishing his friends, his manager, his family, people who owe him money, people who owe his parents money… the point is, it’s needlessly harsh.  

(“I used to take steroids. I still do, but I used to, too.” Photo courtesy of MMAonTap.)

Though he’s not allowed to fight in the U.S. again until July 26, 2009 because of his steroid suspension, Antonio Silva is close to signing a deal that would have him fight at Sengoku‘s January 4th event in Saitama, Japan. I guess this means that Sengoku plans on being the highest bidder when Silva’s contract is auctioned off on Monday. According to Tatame, Silva is “entering the common justice against the athletic commission” that upheld his suspension, which may be their way of saying he’s taking the law into his own hands. Fair enough; we didn’t really put much faith in Armando Garcia‘s rulings anyway.

Nightmare of Battle wonders if Sengoku’s recent pursuit of heavyweights — Dave Herman and Roger Gracie have reportedly received offers, and a fight between Josh Barnett and Kevin Randleman is rumored for the January event — indicates that a heavyweight Grand Prix could be in the works. How badass would that be? We’d say that’s worth defying the CSAC over — though there’s the risk that American MMA organizations would hold a permanent grudge against Bigfoot for fighting while under suspension, and refuse to work with him after the suspension is over. But it’s hard to resist the competitive urge when you’re an athlete. Maybe Silva hopes that everybody in the U.S. will have forgotten about his little horse-steroid misunderstanding by next summer?

(“Braaaiiins!” Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)

Michael Bisping, quoted in Setanta Sports:

“I have to admit I was disappointed when I heard. You know, when all’s said and done, I like Chris Leben. He conducted himself well before and after the fight and, as I say, I like the guy. I’m a little disappointed that he’s done what he’s done, bringing the sport into disrepute, but it’s not really my place to have an opinion on it.

The UFC, as they always do, have set the example with the punishment — and they’re right to do that. Should he banned for life? I don’t think so, people make mistakes, people learn from mistakes. Plenty of fighters have recovered after testing positive, the standard is set at nine months and it would be unfair to go any harsher on Chris…

I don’t know if it makes my win any better, you can make a case for it because — without wanting to start slinging mud — he did cheat and I didn’t. I don’t know why he did it or if he knew he was doing it, but I know my performance was purely down to blood, sweat and tears — and that’s all the satisfaction I need.”

If nothing else, this has to be good for Bisping’s confidence; even a juiced Chris Leben could barely put a mark on the Count’s face. If his next opponent does turn out to be Dan Henderson, he’ll need that confidence and then some. Meanwhile, Leben will have to find an even higher power to trust in if he plans on rescuing his career after his nine-month time-out comes to an end.

(Keep your freakishly large chin up, buddy.)

Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva — who tested positive for the anabolic steroid Boldenone after whipping Justin Eilers back in July to win EliteXC’s vacant heavyweight title — appealed his drug suspension before the California State Athletic Commission earlier today. Unfortunately, it was an utter failure, as the CSAC refused to budge, upholding his 12-month suspension and $2,500 fine. This, of course, comes a day after we learn that EliteXC is dead, which means that Silva’s championship belt isn’t worth the leather its printed on. And it’s only Wednesday!

As we kind of predicted, all the lawyers and credible alibis in the world won’t save you after California decides you’re a steroid user. [Ed. note: Read the first comment in the last link. Mayhem420? More like Nostradamus420!] So anyway, Silva can’t fight again until July 26th, 2009. Things could definitely be worse — he should be able to live comfortably off the $200,000 he made in his last fight, and he could always earn some extra cash here and there as a training partner. But the question is, what happens when his suspension is over? EliteXC is six feet under. Affliction would be a good fit for Silva with their beefy heavyweight division, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be around next July. Would the UFC pick up a fighter coming off of a steroid suspension — and who was formerly associated with EliteXC — or would they shut him out just to prove a point? If I were Bigfoot, I’d start sending muffin baskets to Scott Coker at Strikeforce…

(“Indeed I did have a relationship with methadone that was not appropriate.”)

In a letter received by the Nevada State Athletic Commission yesterday, James Irvin admitted using methadone and oxymorphone prior to his July 19th beatdown at the hands of Anderson Silva; Irvin had tested positive for the heavy-duty painkillers in a post-fight piss-test. As the Sandman wrote:

“In the days leading up to my fight with Anderson Silva, I experienced some residual pain in my foot from a previous injury. I made the extremely poor choice to take some pain medications that I did not have a prescription for. I realize this was an ignorant and dangerous decision.”

Irvin, who tore his ACL and MCL during a fight with Thiago Silva at UFC 71 in May 2007, also broke his foot earlier this year while preparing for a scheduled fight against Rashad Evans, which was to go down at UFC 85. According to Sherdog, Irvin accepted the Anderson Silva fight only days after re-entering the gym following his recovery period from the foot injury. Irvin has been temporarily suspended by the NSAC pending a disciplinary hearing, and likely faces a longer suspension and a fine.

(Yeah, you should probably get that looked at.)

The Nevada State Athletic Commission announced that six fighters have received medical suspensions related to their losses at UFC 84. They are…

Sean Sherk: Suspended until July 7th, with no contact until June 24th (laceration on right cheek)

Keith Jardine: Suspended until November 21st, with no contact until July 9th, but could be cleared by a doctor to compete as early as July 24th (nasal fracture)

Tito Ortiz: Suspended for six months or until clearance by a doctor (injured left hand and wrist)

Wilson Gouveia: Suspended for six months or until clearance by a doctor (broken nose and ribs)

Kazuhiro Nakamura: Suspended for six months or until clearance by a doctor (broken nose)

Jason Tan: Suspended for six months or until clearance by a doctor (broken nose)

Update from MMAMania:

Goran Reljic — The Croatian is suspended until June 24 and there is no contact allowed until June 15.
Antonio Mendes — The Brazilian is suspended until June 24.
Terry Etim — The British lightweight is suspended until June 24 and there is no contact allowed until June 15 because of a right cheek laceration.
Christian Wellisch — “The Hungarian Nightmare” is suspended until June 8 and there’s no contact allowed until June 1.

After the jump: The third episode of ESPN’s “MMA Live,” where Jon, Kenny, and Franklin run down Kimbo Slice’s controversial main event status, UFC 84′s results, Sunday’s WEC show, and the matchup between Fedor Emelianenko and Tim Sylvia; plus, Bas Rutten demonstrates another nasty neck-crank.