Bas Rutten is disappointed in Wanderlei Silva’s recent downturn outside of the cage and believes the Brazilian’s actions will “tarnish” his otherwise remarkable legacy.
The former UFC heavyweight champion joined Australia’s Submission Radio, where he discussed Silva’s recent troubles with the Nevada State Athletic Commission that stem from “The Axe Murderer’s” failure to comply with the commission’s drug testing policies. Rutten considered this recent plunge to be a “shame” considering the legacy Wand erected during his PRIDE days.
“What is happening lately to him, it’s a shame,” Rutten told Submission Radio. “This is going to be a tarnish on his career. I talked about it on ‘Inside MMA’ last Friday with Dana White, I was at the offices, at the UFC offices, and you know it’s true. With the athletic commission, once you walk out while you have to do a test, oh they’re gonna make an example out of you, you know. Otherwise, when you get caught, maybe you can’t fight for six or nine months, but that’s pretty much the maximum penalty, you know.”
Although positive drug tests result in a suspension that varies between 6-12 months depending on the commission and the circumstances, but Rutten believes Silva’s case is far more severe, as he actually walked out on a drug test.
“This is going to be much worse than nine months, I guarantee you that. They’re going to go like ‘ok, let’s make sure this will never happen again’, and god knows they’re going to give him a couple of years. And with the age that he is right now, this could be a career killer, you know. And that’s a shame, because he’s such a good guy and such a fun guy to watch, always exciting, I mean the fights he had in Pride where just the wildest, all the time you know. The Axe Murderer is the perfect name for him”
Apart from discussing Silva’s recent troubles, Rutten also recalled a story where he almost fought the Brazilian in Japan years ago.
“We were pretty close I thought. What happened was, there was that show with the 91,500 people, it was Dynamo or something, I forget the name right now. Anyway, they needed an opponent for him. Now I was at the time, I didn’t do any ground. But I was just training for the last six months Thai boxing, and it actually went really well, I was getting very strong. So I thought to myself, well since this is an event where you have Pride fights and you have K1 fights, I would love to fight him – because they asked me if I wanted to do it – I said I’d love to fight him, but not Pride rules, let’s do K1 rules but with the Pride gloves. That’s what everybody wants to see anyway. They want to see us beating the crap out of each other in a striking war with pride gloves. And they said ok, well let’s ask.
“And it never went through, and it wasn’t because they were scared, or ‘oooh Wanderlei is scared’, Wanderlei isn’t scared of anybody man, this guy fights everybody. So that was really not it, they just went with a different opponent and it didn’t happen.”
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