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In Defense of Chael P. Sonnen

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Recently, as the news broke of Chael Sonnen’s failed drug test, we had a post up right away expressing disappointment that we weren’t going to get to see the fight and we highlighted the overall ridiculousness of this entire situation. Now that Chael has made an official statement on the entire controversy, and more facts have come to light, it’s only fair to re-evaluate and to share those facts with our readers.




Things to Consider Before You Crucify Sonnen

  • When tested, Chael Sonnen had not yet applied for a license to fight in Nedava. For all intents and purposes, he was a civilian.
  • The substances he was busted for taking were being used to safely come down off of his TRT, which he had an approved exemption for.
  • Chael and his camp believed these substances were out of his system already, but obviously some of them lingered.
  • These substances are not performance enhancing drugs, they’re being used to stop TRT in a safer way.
  • Chael Sonnen has literally never told a lie.
  • Chael did not test positive for any type of steroids or anabolics.

Sonnen doesn’t deny that he knew he was taking these substances, unlike a lot of fighters who try to blame their doctors when the test results come back positive.

Let’s see what the American Gangster has to say about it, in his own words…

“They changed the ruling in Nevada. Earlier this year they did away with what’s known as TRT — Testosterone Replacement Therapy — in Nevada, and I was on that,” Sonnen explained on Fox Sports 1. “So when they changed the rule, we all had to go through a transition phase. For me, for the transition, I had to take a couple of things: one is called clomiphene and the other is called HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin). So this is what we did. And I took my boards out of the water in the meantime, meaning I didn’t fight, I didn’t ask for a license. You had to wait to cross this bridge, if you will.

In the interim, they did a test. I tested positive for these things, which I should have. I took them. They were in my system. That wasn’t a surprise. These aren’t anabolics, these aren’t steroids, these aren’t performance-enhancers. None of that stuff. But they have deemed that they are banned substances.”

Seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it? Here’s what an un-schocked Dana White had to say…

“My reaction isn’t shock. This has been lingering. This stuff was legal. TRT was legal, then the Nevada State Athletic Commission said it’s illegal now, it’s gotta go away, but there’s gonna be effects of stopping this thing cold turkey. It just doesn’t work that way. I wish that the commission never let anybody use TRT, and when it went away, they didn’t do a very good job of figuring out how to get these guys off of it. When you get off it, you don’t just go cold turkey. There’s things you’ve got to do. If you don’t take these estrogen blockers, they can get side effects from it. Chael Sonnen is at a point in his life, in his career, where he got married, he’s trying to have children. He was on medicine to get fertile and have a baby, and his wife is now pregnant so it worked. This is between Chael and the commission, but the rules should’ve been laid out better when they said ‘that’s it, it’s over.’”

So, there’s the other side of the story. It will be interesting to see if Chael gets a hearing in time to salvage this fight, it sounds like it’s still somewhat up in the air.

 

 


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