Friend of our site


MMA Headlines


UFC HP


Bleacher Report


MMA Fighting


MMA Torch


MMA Weekly


Sherdog (News)


Sherdog (Articles)


Liver Kick


MMA Junkie


MMA Mania


MMA Ratings


Rating Fights


Yahoo MMA Blog


MMA Betting


Search this site



Latest Articles


News Corner


MMA Rising


Audio Corner


Oddscast


Sherdog Radio


Video Corner


Fight Hub


Special thanks to...

Link Rolodex

Site Index


To access our list of posting topics and archives, click here.

Friend of our site


Buy and sell MMA photos at MMA Prints

Site feedback


Fox Sports: "Zach Arnold's Fight Opinion site is one of the best spots on the Web for thought-provoking MMA pieces."

« | Home | »

Nevada’s circus: Wanderlei Silva & diuretics, anti-inflammatories, and commission morality cops

By Zach Arnold | June 17, 2014

Print Friendly and PDF

Today’s Nevada State Athletic Commission hearing was every bit the circus we thought it would be. And the UFC aired coverage of the Athletic Commission on their pay web site.

During the disciplinary hearing for one fighter in particular, it was revealed that he tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance after drinking milkshakes and that he was drinking the shakes for a stronger abdomen and shoulders. To which Skip Avansino remarked that he knows from experience that drinking milkshakes is not a way to firm up your abdomen.

In regards to the “fact-finding” hearing about Wanderlei Silva not cooperating with the random blood/urine Nevada drug test, it was revealed by his representative that he was using diuretics and anti-inflammatories at the time he was asked to take the test.

“He was surprised for the first time in his career,” noted his representative at the hearing.

Wanderlei originally was going to fight on UFC’s May card but was pushed back to the July card due to a wrist injury. In a brutally-efficient presentation by both Executive Bob Bennett and the drug tester, Wanderlei Silva took a beating.

The drug collector tried to find Wanderlei Silva and initially couldn’t. The phone numbers he was given for both Mr. and Mrs. Silva were off by a digit, so the numbers he called were bad ones and disconnected. So he communicated with Bob Bennett and eventually headed to Silva’s house, where no one was home but a dog was barking. The collector eventually went to Wanderlei’s gym and meet with a person at the front desk, who led him to Wanderlei and a group of people who were eating and taking photos. The tester asked Wanderlei if he would cooperate to give a blood and urine sample and Wanderlei allegedly said he would do so. Wanderlei exited out of the gym after the tester waited around, thinking that Silva perhaps was taking a shower after the training workout.

The collector reached Mrs. Silva and tried to find Wanderlei but was told he might have been at the MGM Grand or doing media interviews. She wasn’t sure where he was. The drug collector reached out to Bob Bennett, who was at a meeting, and eventually Marc Ratner was contacted about what had happened and the rest is history.

The morality police

Pat Lundvall, the lawyer who is a long-time Athletic Commission member, had a field day with Adrien Broner over the comments he made in his post-fight interview with Jim Gray on the May 3rd PPV. She’s an ass and somehow managed to make Broner look sympathetic, which I thought was humanly impossible to do. The amount of bilious moral sanctimony on display by all the members of the Athletic Commission towards Broner was hilarious.

“Are you aware of which comments we asked you to come before us (to address)?”

Lundvall then shamed Broner by asking him to repeat what he said to Jim Gray at today’s hearing.

“I didn’t mean no harm to no Mexican. I’m not a racist. I know that boxing is full of Mexicans. Mexicans is the reason I got the name I got. … It was more (about) entertainment. I didn’t mean to harm nobody. If I hurt anybody saying that comment, I will not say that comment again.”

Andre Agassi’s lawyer, Francisco Aguilar, lectured Broner about the responsibilities that come with being a big star. He wants boxing to continue being a sport that people respect. Skip Avansino played the role of good cop, praising Broner for appearing alone and without a representative. One of the members stated that he was looking forward to Broner’s “rapid maturity” and that he wanted this to be a learning lesson for Broner in order to become a role model of higher character in the future. Yes, the same Athletic Commission that features a member who defied the Nevada Gaming Commission by getting a marijuana permit was one of the people lecturing Adrien Broner about morals and characters. Anthony Marnell is absolutely completely out to lunch during these Athletic Commission meetings. He is as useless as tits on a bull.

Meet the new Athletic Commission doctor, Dr. Raimundo Leon

Nevada’s commission, under Keith Kizer’s tenure, had a history of using some controversial doctors (like Dr. Vicki Mazzorana who was involved in the 2010 incident with Matt Hamill and the staph scab). One of Kizer’s final acts as Executive Director was an attempt to recruit doctors to address the shortage of physicians at events.

Enter Dr. Raimundo Leon, friend of some at the Athletic Commission. He’s licensed with the Arizona and Utah athletic commissions. Bilingual, he was recommended by two doctors and has been shadowing for the last four months at events.

Raimundo Leon has been tagged as controversial in the past by the local press. The Las Vegas Review-Journal published an article in November of 2008 titled Accident victim’s medical bills raise questions about anesthesiologist. The article claimed a doctor that runs a medical billing examining company in Las Vegas had been going after Raimundo Leon for improperly billing clients and allegedly billing patients thousands of dollars over what standard operating procedure should have involved.

Leon worked alongside Dr. Michael A. Prater at Advanced Pain Consultants in Las Vegas. According to 2013 court records, Dr. Leon is associated with the Kraft Center for Pain Control (LLC), working alongside Dr. Prater. Both men are also involved in an LLC called Crimson Investments. Both Dr. Leon and Dr. Prater were also in a company called Kings High Court LLC whose status is now revoked. Their business partners in Kings High Court were Angel Fajardo and Bob Holding.

Dr. Leon also has his own individual professional corporation. He was previously associated with a professional corporation called Noel Medical Consultants and an LLC (now dead) called RLJL Holdings. He is currently associated with Box Canyon Surgery Center LLC, partnering with Dr. Casey Paul, Dr. Debry Peter, and Dr. Kent Willish. Dr. Leon is business partners with Prem Kittusamy for an LLC called Afford Luxury Transportation.

Leon has been pursued in court multiple times by accident & injury attorney Chad Golightly of Golightly & Associates. We contacted Golightly and never received a response to our media inquiry.

There will be a new sub-committee in the future to recruit more doctors to bring into the NSAC pipeline.

Topics: Boxing, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 15 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

15 Responses to “Nevada’s circus: Wanderlei Silva & diuretics, anti-inflammatories, and commission morality cops”

  1. 45 Huddle says:

    It is sad what the UFC has become.

    According to Josh Gross…. Scott Coker is in at Bellator and Bjorn Rebney is likely out. Fantastic if true. Not sure if Coker can turn things around, but he can’t be worse then Rebney was.

  2. 45 Huddle says:

    UPDATE: Rebney officially out of Bellator.

    The MMA world just got a lot better.

    Hopefully they officially sign Coker and stick to only 1 tournament per weight class per year.

  3. Alan Conceicao says:

    I was never the biggest fan of Scott Coker (thought he was overrated, think there’s lots of suspect Strikeforce fights historically) but he’s better than Rebney by miles. Lesser of two evils? Sure. But no promoter in the fight game is clean anyways.

  4. Average Schmoe says:

    I feel it depends on what your expectations are. Strikeforce was nicknamed Strikefarce for a reason, Scott Coker, head honcho, being one of those reasons.

    On a side note, I literally laughed out loud when I read the \”useless as tits on a bull\” line… I never pictured Zach having much of a sense of humour when it comes to political matters. This proves me wrong. Well done, Mr. Arnold, and thank you.

  5. rst says:

    He didn’t be mean to harm no Mexican?

    If some athlete or team owner said anything insensitive what so ever about a Black dude, like not to hang around with them or something, it would be a national scandal.

    Because all race cards aren’t politically equal.

  6. Fluyid says:

    What’s this I’m reading about UFC 174 possibly doing less than 100K PPV buys?

    • Alan Conceicao says:

      Meltzer pegged it at 20,000 buys based on early estimates, a number that is “unheard of” according to him. I find it hilarious, but your mileage may vary. This should be the Rahman/Maskaev II turning point for them like that huge failure . I’m guessing it won’t be, though….

      DERP it was about google searches, not purchases. Basically the number of searches was abysmal.

      • kid nate says:

        No, no, no. Meltzer said there were 20,000 Google searches for the event which is way below the lowest seen in recent years but has only an indirect relationship to the PPV buy rate.
        Meltzer won’t even have the preliminary estimate of the PPV numbers for another week.

        • Alan Conceicao says:

          Yeah, I figured that out like 10 hours prior but thanks for the heads up.

  7. David m says:

    It is wonderful news that ufc 174 did such a horrendous number. Enough of the 2 star fight cards for 5 star prices.

  8. 45 Huddle says:

    UFC 174 did really bad in google searches. It lead some people to speculate if it did below 100k which is what Bellator is rumored to get. I don’t believe either…..

    1) If Bellator did 100k they would be doing another PPV. They are not as of right now.

    2) UFC 174 probably did 150k or less is my guess. But most certainly beat Bellator.

    Don’t get me wrong. I want to see cards like UFC 174 fail. I have been saying this for a while. These cards need to fail so they are not on PPV anymore. The UFC should be doing 8 PPV and 4 FOX shows maximum for big shows.

    The UFC needs to be a weekly Wednesday show with 1 big fight card per month on top of that. Each weekly card should be 4 televised fights maximum to showcase only the better fighters. Leave the rest to fight pass.

    • kid nate says:

      There’s no reason to believe Bellator won’t be doing another PPV, they simply haven’t announced it yet. I doubt they even planned on doing a 2nd PPV in less than six months in a best case scenario.
      Your thinking reminds me of when all you geniuses were declaring Bellator insolvent because they weren’t making any $ on their live gates.

  9. EJ says:

    Someone needs to do a big article and really find out what’s going on with Bellator. To me there is something fishy going on with everything in the promotion yet all we seem to get it bits and pieces of news from mma reporters.

    To me since the ppv everything about Bellator has become about rumors and people making all sorts of claims yet no concrete facts. First the ppv did around 50k buys, then it’s 100k yet instead of people celebrating that big news we get nothing but Meltzer confirming the number as an aside.

    If bellator did 100k buys with their first ppv that is a mega success that needs to be celebrated and talked about by mma journalist. But instead all we get is people confirming it second hand and then bam Bjorn is gone from the company he started. This doesn’t make sense on multiple accounts.

    To me I just want some real answers on the topic, what is the real ppv buy number. Why was Bjorn removed from the company he founded, seriously I just want something more than second hand reports and nobody talking about it first hand. This nevers happens with the UFC good or bad people talk about it but with bellator it’s almost like the mma media is going out of it’s way to not report real news on the subject and that sucks.

    sorry for the too long rant.

  10. limited says:

    It is truly a nice and helpful piece of information. I’m satisfied that you shared
    this helpful information with us. Please keep us informed
    like this. Thanks for sharing.

  11. kahve says:

    Thanks to my father who stated to me on the topic of this blog, this web site
    is in fact awesome.

Comments to kahve

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-spam image