(“Can’t….stop….giggling.”)
According to UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, he injured his shoulder while sparring with Junior dos Santos prior to his UFC 134 bout with Yushin Okami and was put on painkillers for the injury. Silva revealed to the Brazilian magazine Veja that he was in pain the day of the bout and that he took some painkillers to ensure he could fight, but says that unlike guys like Bas Rutten and Karo Parisyan who failed to reveal their use of analgesics to their respective athletic commissions prior to bouts, he did tell the group in charge of overseeing the event that he took the unnamed drug prior to the bout.
“A month before the fight I injured my shoulder while training with Junior dos Santos and I was feeling a lot of pain in Rio. I had to take some medicine and warn the athletic commission about it. I’ve talked to my doctors. I had an MRI and then I started feeling pains in my shoulder but the doctors let me go and said it was not that serious,” Silva says. “It’s a small injury, but I guess it’s on the [rotator] cuff and bothers me. I’ll rest for a while and get healed.”
The problem lies in the fact that the “commission” in this case was actually the UFC and whether or not the type of medication he took prior to the bout is an approved one and if not, will the UFC report it remains to be seen. The promotion has revealed positive drug tests in the past as they did in the case of Chris Leben who tested positive for the anabolic steroid Stanozolol following his UFC 89 loss to Michael Bisping, but what if the guilty party was its most popular champion and arguably its biggest asset?
Banned painkillers include oxycodone and oxymorphone, while approved ones include ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
It will be interesting to hear if the type of drug is revealed by the UFC or if anyone bothers to ask.