The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (25 page)

That’s not what it said
exactly
, but that was the gist of it.

First things first. I was
never
accused of, much less found guilty of, taking anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are synthetic chemicals that mimic various natural bodily secretions, thereby fooling the body into producing more muscle, or scar tissue, or other stuff. I’m not a doctor. Look it up yourself. The short version, which I kinda just gave you, should suffice to give you an idea of what steroids are, and to let you know, once and forever, that I did
not
, nor would I
ever
, take them to gain an unfair advantage in a fight. I was not accused of that, and that issue
never
came up in any proceeding. Any connection between myself, and my circumstances, and anabolic steroids, is the product of the fantastical, nonsensical, and ridiculous speculation that runs rampant on the MMA Web sites.

I was, and had been for some time, under a doctor’s care for low testosterone levels, a naturally occurring male hormone. Low testosterone has nothing to do with virility, muscle mass, or endurance-related issues; it is merely a body-chemistry imbalance. It is extremely common, it is radically unrecognized and undiagnosed, and it is easily treatable with short-term, monitored injections of testosterone, known as testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). Low testosterone is a condition no different than sinusitis or athlete’s foot; and, like those conditions, it is treatable. So, when my condition was diagnosed a long time ago, and my doctor recommended treatment, I of course took his advice—as I’m sure most of you would have done had you been in a similar situation. If I had not taken his advice, I would be a very sick man, but I don’t feel like going into the details of my condition.

Knowing that TRT was perfectly legal in my situation, I went to the hearing to clear my name. I went with the knowledge that the banned list of substances in professional sports is extremely sensitive. Aspirin is banned. Nyquil is banned. Caffeine is even banned, but no one ever gets popped for it because it leaves your system in fifteen minutes. However, if you were to chug a vat of espresso right before your urine test, you would most likely get popped for caffeine. The point I am trying to make is that damn near everything is banned. Testosterone is not. It is legal in forty-six states.

I went to the hearing to plead my case to the California State Athletic Commission. What I didn’t know until I was standing before it is that everyone on the commission is either a friend of someone in a high place, or a friend of a friend of someone in a high place. Like most, I assumed that the commission was composed of a group of individuals who worked forty hours a week, trying to keep the board regulated. In reality, the executive director had a couple of cronies in his office, and the full commission met only twice a year. The members are from all over the state. To make matters worse, they aren’t all up to speed on the rules.

So I went into the hearing and showed them that testosterone was legal in their state. I pointed out that I hadn’t broken any rule; instantly they all began looking around, bewildered. Instead of dropping the issue on the spot, they switched the argument to one of “disclosure.” Now I am no attorney, but I am pretty certain you can’t do that.

For example, let’s say you charge someone with murder. That person comes into court and proves that he had nothing to do with the murder. You can’t suddenly say, “All right, you bastard, you might not have killed anyone, but we are pretty sure that you were speeding on that same day, so we are going to charge you for that.” If that happened to you, I am pretty sure you would be thinking, “Wait a second, I wasn’t charged with speeding. I don’t have time to prepare a defense for speeding. Truthfully, I have no idea if I was speeding or not. Let me go back and look at this. Let me sit down with my legal team, and we will come back to see you another day.”

Needless to say, I was frustrated. They switched the argument from whether or not I was taking TRT to whether or not I had “disclosed” the fact that I was taking the therapy. Well, they still didn’t have a case. I disclosed my testosterone use in California four different ways. I could prove three of them. Two of them were in writing, so there was no disputing that. Two of them were not only signed and dated by me, but also signed and dated by members of the athletic commission. So, there was no disputing the fact that we did in fact disclose the matter.

What happened then? The charges shifted again. It was no longer a matter of if I had or had not disclosed the fact that I was on TRT, but whether or not I had disclosed the fact properly. My disclosure was to the executive director, and it doesn’t get any higher than that on the food chain, but apparently I should have disclosed that information to the executive director’s doctor. I don’t understand why I would need to share my private medical information with a subordinate to the executive director, but if it had been put it in a rulebook somewhere, I would have obeyed. But it hadn’t. In any rulebook. As a result, I assumed that the commission just made it up on the spot.

The end result: I got a six-month suspension. Well, that’s not the way it works, guys. If I cheated, then it should be a year suspension, and I would gladly serve my time. If you can’t show me which rule I broke, then I should get nothing. For me to go in there and prove that they were wrong, and for them to split the difference with me, was ludicrous. Did I break a rule or didn’t I? There is no gray area here. If I didn’t break a rule, there should be no six-month suspension.

What I found out later is that in the history of the California State Athletic Commission, it has never been wrong. Never once have the members ruled against themselves. But what they did was wrong. You can’t recharge someone on the spot without due diligence. So immediately I began looking into my rights as an American. What were my options? According to a certain attorney to the stars, my options were vast. He charges something like a thousand dollars an hour, but he agreed to take my case for free. He told me that what they did was illegal, and that California had no cap, which meant I could sue them on a tort claim. I could sue them for an endless amount of money.

But was that a viable option? As an athlete, my days are numbered. If I sat out the six months, I would be done with the whole mess and I could go right back to fighting. If I took the commission to court, it might be a year before I saw a judge. So it would take twice as long to prove my innocence. I wanted nothing more than to fight back, but with the commission meeting only once every six months, and with any objection to their charges regarded as a “throwing of stones,” I decided to grin and bear it.

Then came the media. One reporter on ESPN blatantly lied. He said my testosterone levels were four times that of the legal limit. Once he did that, once he spoke that untruth, it became my reality. I have no idea where he got that “information” because the commission never said anything of that nature. Why? Because it wasn’t true. If my testosterone was truly that high, I would not be competing in the middleweight division. I wouldn’t even be competing in the light heavyweight division. I would be in the super heavyweight division. In high school, at seventeen years old, I wrestled for the state championships at 185 pounds. Now, I don’t know another person who can say that he weighs the same at thirty-four years of age as he did when he was seventeen. Not one. If I were on that amount of juice, I would look like … well, I would look like Jose Canseco. And for the record, I do not look Jose Canseco.

I understand when a reporter chooses to believe the government over the person being accused of doing something wrong, but the government never made the claim that my testosterone level was four times the legal limit. Naturally, I asked the reporter if he even knew what the legal limit was. I informed him that the legal limit for testosterone is so incredibly loose that it would be near impossible for a person to exceed it. I told him to ask any doctor. If any man were four times the legal level of the loose limit, he’d be dead.

Did that matter? Nope. The damage had already been done. A number of other media outlets picked up the story and ran with it. I couldn’t blame them—it was on ESPN for crying out loud. They just assumed it had to be true. The reporter who made the initial blunder promised to make it right. How did he do that? Did he go back on camera and tell everyone that he had made a mistake? No. He wrote a small article on the matter.

I was unjustly labeled a “steroid monger” and a “cheater.” That had become my reality, and I had two options. I could vehemently deny the allegations, but knowing what I know about the media, that would only cause them to write more articles and stories. None of them would give me the time that you, dear readers, are giving me in this book to explain myself. So to shut them up, I simply went with it. One reporter said to me, “They tested you at .7 and the normal limit is .6.” I said to him, “Retest that. You must have caught me on a low day.” It was like the kid you love to tease on the bus; you only bust his chops for as long as he gives you the reaction you want. By going along with the whole charade, I got them to stop talking about it.

The whole matter reminded me of a gentleman on Ronald Regan’s cabinet. They loaded a bunch of garbage on his back, and it absolutely destroyed him. When he finally got his day in court, he couldn’t have been more innocent. After his victory, he said something like, “Well, I’ve won the case, but now whom do I see about getting my reputation back?”

My reputation was ruined and the whole ordeal was absolutely humiliating. But the truth of the matter is that if I don’t stick a needle in my thigh twice a week, my health will deteriorate. So I am not going to quit doing it, and I am not going to apologize for doing it. Being unjustly labeled a cheater hurts, but when the only way to eliminate that buzz word is to sacrifice your health, it makes your decision a no-brainer.

I did my time and I am done. Don’t ask me what happened, or when, or really how. I truly don’t know, and can’t tell you. I’m fighting again. I haven’t fought in California. I don’t know if I even can, or would want to. I don’t want to even ask, because I am certain that the “answer” will be a jumble of confusion-producing legalese, with no real answer, and I worry that diving into that rabbit hole again might leave me stark, staring MAD.

I can tell you this—the last time I breezed through the ol’ Golden State, one of the commission big wigs who made my life a living hell was standing at a red light, looking a bit worse for wear, holding up a cardboard sign that said, “Will Suspend Innocent Fighters Indefinitely for Food (Junk Science = Evidence).” I owed him a stern lecture, and maybe a slapping around, but instead, I just rolled down the window of the limo my sponsor had picked me up in, handed the worn-out old codger a five-spot, and told the driver to lead-foot me and my babe to the House of Blues for the Gospel Brunch.

When did
new
become synonymous with
better
?

f you read this book from the beginning, as opposed to flipping randomly around every time you sat on the toilet, then you probably remember reading my chapter on ancient knowledge and are probably thinking, “There goes ChaCha, contradicting himself. He just got finished telling me old things suck, and now he is telling me old is better.” Let me explain. I’m not talking about old forms of martial arts or old styles of dressing. In those cases, new is clearly better. But America clearly has an obsession for
new
. Just look at our desire (no, our
need
) to upgrade our iPhones almost as quickly as we upgrade our spouses (
Siri
-ously, you don’t need to replace your iPhone every two weeks.) But just because something is new does not necessarily make it better. To ensure we are heading in the right direction, we need to compare and contrast. This is especially true in politics. Let’s look at the progressive ideology of “change.” People on the left immediately view “change” as being better than what came before it, simply by virtue of being different—that is, not the same.