Sutcliffe's Take
SUTCLIFFE: What If... Chael Sonnen and Shane Carwin Had Been Triumphant This Summer? The UFC Dodges Two PR Nightmares
Sep 20, 2010 - 11:57:43 AM SUTCLIFFE: What If... Chael Sonnen and Shane Carwin Had Been Triumphant This Summer? The UFC Dodges Two PR Nightmares

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By: Steve Sutcliffe, MMATorch Columnist

As summer inevitably fades away into fall, I find myself reminiscing over the events that have unfolded over the past few months. Memorial Day weekend highlighted by the heavily-delayed match-up between Rampage and Rashad Evans. Fourth of July weekend capped off by the fireworks between Carwin and Lesnar. And even though the rest of July was extremely quiet, August started off with a bang with Chael Sonnen nearly shocking the world and taking the Middleweight Title off of Anderson Silva.

Yes, the summer of 2010 was filled with a ton of compelling fights. Perhaps we even got a little spoiled as UFC 119 reminds you that not every card can be packed to the gills with blockbuster match-ups. Things in mid-September seemed to even hit a lull as the biggest story was the status of Mirko Cro Cop's eye - no doubt a cause for concern as such news would put a dent into a pay-per-view that had very little mainstream appeal to begin with.

But then the news came out that Chael Sonnen, he of the golden mouth and the unique ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory time and time again, tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. We can spend countless hours speculating what he tested positive for and all the sordid details associated with said speculation, but the fact of the matter is that this is by far the highest profile drug failure of a fighter since the UFC launched itself into the mainstream.

We were 110 seconds away from the UFC being in the unenviable position of having its Middleweight Champion being a confirmed drug-user - ask Bud Selig, that's never a good thing for public relations.

Drug use is nothing new to MMA, or the UFC specifically. Those who have tested positive for something read like a who's who of the sport: Sean Sherk, Ken Shamrock, Josh Barnett and Tim Sylvia, just to name a few. And look no further than current middleweight contender Nate Marquardt as evidence of someone who can overcome the results of an initial failed test, who ironically may be Sonnen's replacement as number one contender to Anderson Silva's title.

But that doesn't mean the Sonnen situation isn't somewhat of a black eye to the UFC, although it could have been a hell of a lot worse if Silva hadn't locked in that miraculous come from behind triangle armbar.

Speaking of hell of a lot worse, remember when that federal prosecutor tied Shane Carwin to a steroid distribution ring back in mid-August? Yeah, me neither. But you can bet every bottom dollar that everyone would be remembering it if Josh Rosenthal would have stopped the pounding in the first round and awarded the fight and the UFC Heavyweight Championship to Carwin. I'm not saying that Congress would start handing out subpoenas to Zuffa if two of UFC's champions came under fire for performance enhancing drugs, just that in playing a fun little game of "what if?", we were pretty close to dealing with the fallout. At this stage of the sport's development, whether fair or not, that would have been a huge blow to the momentum that the UFC has generally been enjoying these past few years. And MMA doesn't exactly need negative stories to elicit negative publicity.

So in thinking back to this past summer and all the titles that didn't change hands in the UFC, just thank Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar and Josh Rosenthal (for getting the call right twice) for incidentally saving the sport of MMA as we know it. Or at least saving the UFC from having to deal with endless speculation from the knee-jerk media that all of its champions are cheaters. For now, we'll leave that to the appropriate forums - internet message boards.