Jan 13, 2009 - 11:19:47 PM By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Suspended by the California State Athletic Commission following his bout in July at EliteXC: Heat, Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva has filed a civil action against MMA's governing body in the state of California. According to Sherdog.com, Silva filed for a "writ of mandate" in the Los Angeles Superior Court on January 7th. He's looking for a decision to either overrule the one year suspension handed down to him or to be allowed another hearing to "prove his innocence."
The contention from the Silva camp has been that his test came back with a false positive cause by an over-the-counter supplement Novedex. Sherdog states that Novodex is "contains the testosterone booster ATD, is currently not included on the CSAC’s list of banned substances and has been documented to cause false readings for Boldenone before." They also contend that Silva's pre-fight questionnaire was presented to him in English, and his supplement use was only marked as "multi-vitamins" on the form by his manager, and translator, Alex Davis, who was assisting him on "portions of his questionnaire."
Due to the fact that he competed in Japan on January 4th at the Sengoku 7 event, the CSAC had already scheduled a February 10th hearing set to be a review to revoke Silva's license in California. This comes down to Silva's camp feeling they were presented with the burden of proof, when it should have been the other way around from the commission; further, they contend he needed to take the fight in Japan for monetary reasons, as he's got expensive medical bills stemming from his acromegaly, which is a chronic condition that causes enlargement of the extremities and face due to an overactive pituitary gland. If this suit and their subsequent appeals to overturn the suspension are unsuccessful, Davis says Silva "will fight in Japan forever...he just doesn’t have a choice."
Penick's Analysis: It seems from what is presented here that what should have happened at Silva's initial appeal in October did not. Silva and his lawyers presented an independent sample that was clean to the commission, who then "questioned the validity of Silva’s independent test in regards to its authenticity and chain of custody." This before they entirely dismissed the program in which Silva was tested in December following the exit of Executive Officer Armando Garcia, and held events without testing a single participant before implementing their new and, admittedly, improved system using the "same UCLA laboratory used by NFL, minor league baseball, men’s and women’s NCAA sports, and the Dept. of Defense." This is in no way a proclamation of Silva's innocence, but the man does seem to have a legitimate case, and he's willing to fight for that in court. There's something that just feels off from the initial hearing in October to the exit of Garcia in December to the entire testing system being scrapped to implement a new one. There are too many factors to stay steadfast at the year long suspension. At the very least he made a case for a reduced punishment. We'll find out more in the coming weeks and months either way.
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