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Report: Armando Garcia resigns from California SAC
By Zach Arnold | November 9, 2008
Loretta Hunt further elaborates on this agenda list on the California State Athletic Commission web site, which states that Armando Garcia will be tendering his resignation from the CSAC on November 18th.
Topics: Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 13 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
The typical bad writing from Hunt.
“Garcia was also at the center of the controversial steroid suspensions of former UFC lightweight champion Sean Sherk, Strikeforce participant Phil Baroni, and most recently, in the one-year suspension of EliteXC heavyweight champion Antonio Silva.”
Not sure what was so controversial about those suspensions. The fighters tested positive. They got suspended. The only one that was a bit controversial was the Sherk case, but only because the CSAC messed it up so much. The other two (Baroni & Silva), were pretty typical.
Yeah, weird.
I’m assuming that he has something coming up that he’s able to get paid more for, this isn’t a gubernatorial election year in California, so he’s not resigning because of an administration change.
Sherk case was delayed and delayed and delayed, first because the CSAC never sent Sherk’s lawyer the info he requested and then because they didn’t bother to read any of the paperwork Jacobs sent the CSAC prior to the case. They then delayed the hearing for another month because hey, fuck working.
Regarding Baroni’s steroid case, I initially thought it was open and shut but it’s actually got a lot more merit to it than most other steroid cases. Check this out for some basic info on the case:
http://www.fightlinker.com/?p=872
As for the Bigfoot Silva case, they never even debated the key component of the case: that a non-banned substance caused his test to show positive for a banned substance. They also set up the double standard of ‘no tests but our tests are valid’.
Over and over again, the CSAC contradicted itself on policy and basically stated that whatever rules they decided at the time were what they were going to play with, even if they were the exact opposite of decisions made in the past.
The commission has a major history of being terribly run. Pretty much everyone in the industry agrees that they’re a huge pain in the ass to deal with.
45:
Not only are Loretta’s facts off but that is a horrendous run-on sentence.
The only thing unusual about the Baroni and Sherk suspensions were that they were reduced in half, despite the ridiculous defenses offered by their lawyers. Taking a steroid unknowingly because it was in a supplement that you took, even if that is really all that happened, does NOT mean that it was a false positive and does NOT mean that you don’t deserve the full suspension.
Also, what was the web site that had the multi-part investigative series on how Garcia operated? I know there was one on MaxBoxing, but there was another one that I can’t remember.
Here’s one:
http://www.fightnightnews.com/garcia.html
And regarding false positives, Bigfoot took ADT which caused a positive test for boldenone. ADT is not boldenone, nor is it a banned substance. As for Baroni, read the link provided in the original post … if you have more info on that situation I’d love to hear more.
I agree with your statement that banned substances in supplements does not mean a positive testing is a false positive testing. But in Bigfoot’s case, his positive was caused by a non-banned substance. If the CSAC had made a ruling on the issue i’d be okay with it but they ignored the fact so they wouldn’t have to make a decision. Pathetic.
Again regarding Baroni’s case, I was shocked to find myself siding with him based on what I learned during his case. But how can one explain multiple tests coming clean and even retests of the csac samples coming through clean? If Ken Pavia is lying about the situation, then that changes things. But no one has come forward to challenge his statements.
It seems that in the three years that Garcia was running CSAC there were tons of odd decisions and a number of things they just plain botched. There are going to always be certain decisions that will be controversial from any athletic commission but CSAC excelled at controversy. Even if you drop half of the controversies as people just grouching on them you still have a commission with a lot of screwy things going on and Garcia was in the middle of all of it.
Isn’t this the same mental midget that suspended or fined Josh Thompson for wearing a “Frank Shamrock is a bitch” t-shirt??
“Isn’t this the same mental midget that suspended or fined Josh Thompson for wearing a “Frank Shamrock is a bitch” t-shirt??”
Which wasn’t even as bad as him fining or suspending someone for a cartwheel guard pass.
Wow. “You lost a fight, now take a pay cut or we’re releasing you.” Tough break for Fabricio Werdum. He had just signed a new contract after beating Brandon Vera and before losing to Junior dos Santos, and it was thrown out the window when he lost.
I wonder how much it has to do with him coming in 20 lbs over weight and obviously not taking the fight seriously.
All I know is that if I showed such a lack of effort at my job, I would have likely been fired. He should have been happy that they offered him a pay decrease.
I’m all for the UFC getting the best fighters. And I still think them not signing Matt Lindland is garbage. But in this case, with Werdum coming in so out of shape, it’s a slap in the face to the fans who purchase the PPV and buy tickets to see the event. Can’t exactly feel bad for the guy.
How do we know that he didn’t take the fight seriously? He came in heavier than he usually is, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t taking the fight seriously. It could have just have easily been that a training injury caused him to be able to train less, and that caused him to put on some weight. That happens all the time to fighters, and in the weight classes that require cutting, it can make for some very hard weight cutting (ie, Thiago Alves with his injured ankle before the Matt Hughes fight). In heavyweight fights, you don’t have to cut weight at all unless you’re Brock Lesnar, but a training injury could still cause you to come in heavier than usual. Again, I’m not saying that he DID have a training injury, I’m just saying that it has to be considered just as likely or more likely than simply not taking the fight seriously.