Early this morning, Wanderlei Silva filed a motion to dismiss his Thursday disciplinary hearing in front of the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) citing that the commission lacked jurisdiction to punish him for the random drug test he skipped out on May 24th in Las Vegas.
“It is abundantly clear that the NSAC lacks jurisdiction to take disciplinary action over Mr. Silva, a non-licensee, for not submitting to testing that the NSAC had no authority to order,” Silva’s lawyer, Ross Goodman, wrote in a motion addressed to Nevada Deputy Attorney General Christopher Eccles and obtained by MMAFighting.com.
Silva reportedly ran from an independent representative who tried to collect a random blood and urine sample from the fighter at his gym on May 24th ahead of his scheduled bout against Chael Sonnen at UFC 175. When he was approached to take the test again, he continued to ignore the requests. Silva later admitted to the NAC that he fled because he was worried about the tests showing the presence of diuretics in his system, a banned substance Silva claims to have been taking solely to minimize the inflammation in his fractured right wrist.
Diuretics are classified as a banned substance largely due to their prevalence as a masking agent to prevent detection of other illegal substances in an athlete’s system.
Goodman argued that the NAC lacked jurisdiction to “proceed with any type of disciplinary action against Mr. Silva because he was not licensed” at the time of the random test, and that “only someone licensed before the NSAC can be found to have violated NAC 467.850 (1), (2) and (5),” which states that “a licensee who violates any provision of this section is subject to disciplinary action by the Commission.”
Silva did not attend Thursday’s NAC meeting in Las Vegas.
