Guerrilla Journalism: A black eye for MMA
It’s also why many football players are being asked to submit random samples by the time they get to high school.
There really aren’t many accomplishments that go unquestioned in baseball these days, and there are probably plenty of people wondering how more and more 18-year-old football recruits are showing up on campus at well over 350 pounds.
And now mixed martial arts has joined the throngs of other athletic endeavors sporting a black eye thanks to what I like to call, “Creative Chemistry.”
Josh Barnett isn’t the first mixed martial artist to submit a dirty test — Tim Sylvia, Hermes Franca and Thiago Alves are a few that come to mind right off hand — but he may be the first to cost the brand he’s working for an entire show!
Barnett was scheduled to fight Fedor Emelianenko — widely believed to be the best heavyweight in the world — at Affliction’s third event in its short history, but the show had to be cancelled after Barnett’s license was denied and a suitable replacement couldn’t be found in time for the August 1 contest.
Granted anyone fighting Emelianenko probably needs all the help they can get, but come on.
UFC president Dana White has been known to blow up on guys for not making weight or putting on a sloppy performance, but I think his bald dome would explode if he had to try and replace a main event on 10 days notice because one of the fighters failed a drug test.
Affliction is a fledgling company trying to find a niche in a market dominated by the UFC, and having to cancel an event featuring a fighter as popular as Emelianenko can’t be good for business.
This is now Barnett’s second positive test — he failed one in 2002, the same year he beat Randy Couture — and, I for one, hope athletic commissions all over the world take this opportunity to make an example out of him and let the rest of the fighters know this will not stand.
Posted by Ron Counts at 06:04 PM. Filed under:
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