Chael Sonnen's drug suspension reduced to six months

Kamara666 · **Posted:** Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:32 pm

Chael Sonnen's drug suspension reduced to six months; Josh Barnett rescheduled

by Dann Stupp on Dec 02, 2010 at 8:45 pm ET
The California State Athletic Commission today approve a reduction of UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen's UFC 117 drug suspension from a year to six months.

His $2,500 fine remains unchanged.

During the same hearing, Strikeforce heavyweight Josh Barnett's request to be re-licensed in California was delayed once again.

Today's hearing took place in Sacramento. Sonnen and Barnett's scheduled hearings were the two primary items on today's agenda.

Sonnen landed a date with the influential commission after a failed bid to take UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva's title during an Aug. 7 event in Oakland. Sonnen dominated the champ for four rounds but succumbed to a triangle-choke submission midway through the fifth and deciding round.

Although promised an immediate rematch, Sonnen instead was put on the sidelines when CSAC executive director George Dodd confirmed the challenger had tested positive for elevated testosterone levels. (His testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio tested at 16.9, which well exceeded the CSAC's 4.0 cutoff, according to recently released documents.)

Sonnen has kept quiet since news of the failed test, but he and a team lead by lawyers Howard Jacobs and Steven Thompson today broke their silence. Sonnen said he's undergone testosterone-replacement therapy since 2008 as treatment for hypergonadism, a condition in which there is hyperfunction of the gonads. Jacobs argued that Sonnen passed a CSAC test in October 2009 (when he defeated Yushin Okami at UFC 104) and rebutted the commission's claim that officials hadn't been notified prior to UFC 117 of the therapy. Sonnen, though, said he received verbal confirmation.

Dodd confirmed Sonnen had notified him of the therapy but said he hadn't taken the proper steps at UFC 117.

With some apparent miscommunication, CSAC officials voted 3-1 (after an initial 2-2 deadlock) to reduce his suspension. He's now eligible to return to competition on March 2 of the coming year.

Where Sonnen lands in the UFC middleweight division upon his return remains unknown. Back in September and following news of the failed test, UFC president Dana White told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) he wasted little time in scheduling Silva for a fight with Vitor Belfort, which is now expected to take place Feb. 5 in Las Vegas. With Sonnen's situation unresolved, he and UFC matchmaker Joe Silva felt the fight with Belfort, who had been promised a title shot even before Sonnen (until an injury sidelined him), made sense.

"There were a lot of people calling for the Belfort fight when we made the Chael rematch," White said. "But I know Vitor wanted that fight, so it made sense.

"Am I disappointed? Yes, absolutely. But if you guys realized how much bad [expletive] I put up with on a daily basis, you almost start to get numb to it. So you move on, and Chael is going to face the consequences and go before the commission, and we'll work things out."

Barnett, meanwhile, experienced another roadblock in his effort to find resolution with the CSAC. The veteran fighter failed a drug test (due to a designer steroid Drostanolone) as part of traditional licensing procedures in 2009, though the CSAC was in no position to suspend or fine him since it wasn't a fight-night drug test. Instead, they simply could deny his license.

Barnett, whose appeal of the fight-license denial continually was delayed over the past year due for various reasons ranging from miscommunication to inclement weather, arrived without legal counsel and planned to speak with commission officials and request a license renewal. However, when CSAC officials began to present a case against his failed test – and when Barnett denied taking steroids and said he didn't plan to appeal at the hearing – they offered him the opportunity to return at a future hearing with counsel.

"I show up only to [reapply] and get ambushed by an assistant [attorney general] who has put together a case against me. Sweet," Barnett wrote on Twitter. "As if I would show up without my legal representation if I knew that was going to be the case!"

His hearing now is expected to take place in February. Until then, a date for his Strikeforce debut remains unknown.

(Pictured: Chael Sonnen)

http://mmajunkie.com/news/21598/chael-s ... eduled.mma

Chael Sonnen's drug suspension reduced to six months

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