When Stephan Bonnar got the call to fight Anderson Silva at UFC 153 in Oct. 2012, it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime.
Instead, it turned into nightmare. Bonnar was defeated by Silva, popped for steroids in his post-fight drug test, and ended up retiring.
On Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, Bonnar, who is coming out of retirement to face Tito Ortiz in Bellator on Nov. 15, revealed just how low he sunk when he found himself a pariah in the MMA world.
“It completely blew up in my face,” Bonnar said. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was the closest to offing myself I’ve ever been. It just sucked. So, anyway. That’s why I’m so jaded now. That’s the reason.”
Bonnar went on to explain why he used. Bonnar, who had gone nearly a year since his last fight, against Kyle Kingsbury, thought he was for all intents and purposes retired. So when he was asked to help a couple fighters prepare for fights, and figured no fights of his own on the horizon, he thought there was no real harm in doing a steroid cycle.
“I haven’t been in the gym,” Bonnar said. “I’m weak, I’m skinny, I got some stem cell procedures done on my knee, I took a lot of time off. I’m like, crap. I’m really injury prone. So it was like, you know what, I have a month before I have to go train. So yeah, I’m not worried about getting tested any more. I’m going to do a cycle of steroids. My goal, to get big and strong. I’m going to eat a lot, lift heavy weights, get big and strong. Don’t have to worry about my cardio, don’t have to worry about making weight, don’t have to worry about getting drug tested. So that’s what I did. I never thought I had to fight again.”
Then came the call to fight Silva, a bout which Bonnar lost via TKO.
“By the time I got that call I had been off them for a couple weeks,” said Bonnar, whose UFC 153 test failure was the second of his career. “So it was like, oh man, now I have to work on my cardio, diet really good and be ready for this fight, hey if I beat Anderson Silva, the s- is out of my system, I’m going to rule the world.”
Obviously, it didn’t end up working out that way. Bonnar tested positive for Drostanolone and announced his retirement.
Bonnar admitted the disastrous ending to his UFC run is part of the motivation for his comeback.
“That’s a terrible way to go out,” Bonnar said. “It definitely is. I can’t even watch it, I’d watch the UFC or fighting and I’d just get depressed. … people would call me a cheater and a piece of s–. You don’t want to be sitting there defending yourself.”