Top UFC Star Suspended For Five Years Following Failed Drug Test
You won't be seeing Nick Diaz in the cage any time soon.
The former Strikeforce Welterweight Champion was suspended for five years on Monday after the Nevada State Athletic Commission suspended him after a UFC 183 post-fight drug test failure. This was Diaz's third infraction.
Diaz came prepared, bringing his lawyers and an excellent case to the NSAC. One of his attorneys even got involved in a verbal battle with notorious NSAC member Pat Lundvall, who mocked Diaz's decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.
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Diaz tested positive for marijuana following his UFC 183 loss to Anderson Silva. Under the NSAC's policies that began in May, Diaz would have been suspended for three years and fined 50-60 percent of his purse. Instead, he got five years and 33 percent of his purse, which was $166,666. The aforementioned Lundvall had suggested a lifetime ban.
"I'm pretty pissed off," Diaz said to reporters after the hearing. "First of all, this sport, this commission and everybody, they've done everything they can to keep me from being all the way on top where I should be. They've been doing everything they could to keep me from proving to the world that I'm the best fighter in the world, which I am. Those people are nothing but a bunch of crooks up there. The reason why I became a fighter, on top of a handful of reasons, was so that I don't have to break the law. People around me in my community, people I know, they don't have to break the law either. We even did a lot of good. They got me in here sweating bullets in a freaking court room with my lawyers because they all think I'm going to flip out and do something really nuts like I was about this close to doing."
Diaz's camp has said they plan on appealing the suspension. We'll have more on the situation on this week's Wrestling Inc podcast.
777 contributed to this article.