New Details Revealed: Chael Sonnen Tested Positive for Steroids

It has all the makings for one of the biggest stories of the year, despite the fact that the year is winding down. I reported earlier that Chael Sonnen recently tested positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs following his ufc 117 bout with Anderson Silva, a fight which saw Sonnen dominate for twenty-three straight minutes before being trapped in a Hail Mary Triangle Choke, resulting in one of the most dramatic comebacks in recent UFC history. Now the Los Angeles Times has come out and revealed that Sonnen has in fact tested positive for steroids, and faces a one-year suspension from Mixed Martial Arts as well as a $2,500 fine for his indiscretions.

Here’s what the report had to say: “Chael Sonnen, the brash Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight contender who nearly defeated champion Anderson Silva in August, tested positive for a steroid before the fight in Oakland and faces a year-long suspension, California State Athletic Commission Executive Officer George Dodd said Sunday… Sonnen will have 30 days to appeal his suspension and $2,500 fine, said Dodd… Dodd said Sonnen’s positive test emerged from a urine sample he gave before the fight that was processed through the UCLA Olympic drug-testing lab.”

As I said in the original article, the overwhelming majority of evidence states that these tests are accurate. Sonnen faces a very long and very difficult road ahead if he chooses to appeal the suspension. When former UFC Lightweight Champion Sean Sherk appealed his positive steroids test, the best he got was his suspension cut in half, from one year to six months. Even with the best of evidence, Sonnen is still looking at a sizeable layoff. It’s just the way these things go, no matter how unfair it may seem.

I’m sure we’ll get a lot of conspiracy theories from the Sonnen faithful, but I’m going to put my faith in a system that is so trustworthy that it’s used in the Olympics. I think there’s very little room for debate now that full details have been revealed, and I didn’t think there was much room for debate in the first place. It doesn’t matter what you think about steroids in MMA, you could believe that everybody’s juicing or that everybody is a saint and that only the big bads touch the roids. But the simple fact of the matter is that Sonnen got caught. He took a chance, he gambled his entire reputation for one shot at UFC gold, and now the greatest performance of his career is nothing but a black mark on his good name.

This puts a real dent in the UFC’s plans. Sonnen/Silva 2 was one of the most hotly-anticipated rematches in years, and now it may never happen. The odds-on favorite for Silva’s next challenger is the winner of the upcoming Vitor Belfort/Yushin Okami showdown, and even those two potential Middleweight Championship fights lose their luster if the Sonnen/Silva rematch doesn’t happen first. As fight fans, as UFC fans, as MMA fans, we need to know once and for all if Chael Sonnen can beat Anderson Silva. Now that it looks like we’re going to be deprived of that fight, I don’t see any potential Anderson Silva fight coming close to the marketability and potential entertainment value of the Sonnen/Silva rematch. And that includes Belfort/Silva, a fight I’ve personally labeled as a “dream-match”.

So there you have it, fans and friends. No “flu medication” here, no conspiracy theories. Another professional athlete has tested positive for steroids. I know, I know…it’s such a shocking revelation, isn’t it? But no matter where you stand on the issue, let’s get some debate going. How bad do you think things will get for Chael Sonnen? Where do you think he goes from here? And what do you think the future holds for the UFC’s Middleweight division now that Sonnen is likely looking at a year-long layoff?