Frank Mir maintains that he didn’t knowingly take any performance enhancing substances, but he revealed on his podcast this weekend that the USADA test in which he was flagged came back for an oral steroid. He’s having the B sample tested, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to argue his innocence should that come back positive as well.
To that end, Mir’s not sure what his options will be if the B sample comes back positive for the same substance.
“The stance is you’re guilty until proven innocent,” Mir said (transcribed by FoxSports.com). “I have the molecule in my system, I have no clue, I wish I did. I wish I had some viable excuse for why I did it because I know how society is – every athlete that’s whose ever been popped, if they deny it vehemently, it never [expletive] goes away. It stays on them. The guys that sit there and go ‘yeah I did it, I made a mistake, I won’t do it again’, there’s a slap on the wrist and our society seems to be able to move on. I’m not dumb, I’m telling you I understand that formula.
“I’m not going to lie and say that I took something knowingly that I didn’t take,” he continued “… Basically if the ‘B’ sample comes back and I don’t see anyway how I’m going to explain, I know the lawyer and Malki [Kawa] are like ‘we’ve got to figure out everything you ate and everything you put in your body for the last six weeks’ – come on man, ask my wife, I’m lucky I can figure out where the car is in the driveway half the time. There’s no way, I don’t remember, I don’t log things down like that.
“Basically this is retirement for me. I don’t see any other way around it. That was probably my last time fighting. Retire, then maybe, I’ve always wanted to be a police officer, I like the fire department, maybe get into something else. I don’t see any other way around it. Age is already catching up to me now and I’m not going to get any younger in the next two years.”
Penick’s Analysis: The very nature of these failed tests makes it hard for fans to believe any fighters denying wrong doing. Now, he deserves due process in this situation, but if it’s in his system it’s in his system, and he has to account for how it got there. Feigning ignorance to that and not having a solid explanation the likes of Yoel Romero’s contaminated supplement situation means he has to take whatever punishment is in line. Retirement wasn’t far off for him, so if it is a two year term it wouldn’t be surprising if he followed through on that.
[Frank Mir art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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