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By Zach Arnold

When it rains, it pours. All this week, the bad news for Elite XC has continued to pour in.

Remember when your parents told you that there always is a consequence to every decision you make in life? The management at Elite XC is finding out the hard way that there is, in fact, consequences to making bad business decisions. Really bad ones.

Take for instance yesterday’s big news story that Elite XC Heavyweight champion Antonio “Big Foot” Silva allegedly tested positive for the horse steroid boldenone. The California State Athletic Commission has suspended Silva for a year. Boldenone is one of the stupidest performance-enhancing drugs to take because of the long half-life (nearly six months) that it carries in your body’s system. In other words, traces of the drug stick around for a while.

Naturally, you would think that Elite XC management would be upset and cut ties with “Bigfoot” Silva. Wrong again. After the CSAC made the announcement that Silva tested positive for boldenone, Elite XC management went into classic Dana White Defense Mode. After all, everyone in the MMA business saw the road that Mr. White paved for Sean Sherk in his aggressive defense against failing a CSAC-administered drug test. MMA is a copycat business and everything that UFC does (both good and bad) is always magnified to a larger-than-life degree.

“We respect the California commission and the job they do,” said Elite XC boss Jeremy Lappen. “We always enjoy working with them and work very well together. The illegal use of steroids is a problem in all major sports, including mixed martial arts. We certainly do not condone the use of steroids.

“But we also support, trust and have confidence in our fighter, Antonio Silva, who has denied ever taken any illegal substance, including steroids, and is prepared to challenge the results of the California Commission.

“So until all the facts are known and a final decision is rendered, EliteXC will reserve making any further comments at this time.’’

The failed drug test for Antonio Silva compounds what has already been one (pardon the pun) giant error for Elite XC in regards to selecting who they wanted to push as the ‘ace’ of their new heavyweight division. Compared to other heavyweight MMA champions, Silva’s not that great of a fighter. He is alluring in terms of the amount of upside or potential that he is, but upside and potential are nothing more than code words for ‘not getting anything done yet.’

Elite XC has had egg on its face since Silva’s bout against Justin Eilers for the promotion’s heavyweight title on July 26th in Stockton. First, the fight wasn’t that good and Silva should have finished off Eilers faster than he did. Second, Silva was reportedly paid $200,000 USD ($100k to show + $100k to win) to fight on the show. His fight wasn’t even aired on the CBS broadcast, but instead relegated to the rarely-watched Showtime portion of the event. Third, the promotion received negative media attention when it was revealed that the respectable Scott Smith, who fought Robbie Lawler in the main event of the CBS telecast, was only paid $14,000 as a headliner. That’s right — Elite XC paid a heavyweight nearly 13 times more to headline a show that few people watched while paying a main eventer a fight salary that someone could make on minimum wage in a year in America at your local drug store.

Elite XC is now stuck with Antonio Silva. If they cut him from their roster now, then they have no heavyweight champion and nobody in the heavyweight scene who could even crack the Top 10 right now. If they keep him (as it looks like they are), they are stuck with a big-money contract and a fighter whose reputation is now tarnished by a failed drug test. Ask Sean Sherk how his life has been since failing a CSAC drug test.

If you thought Elite XC’s problems with Antonio Silva were a headache, think again. Elite XC management is having a hell of a time with fighter KJ Noons and his manager Mark Dion. A few weeks on Fight Opinion Radio, Jeff Thaler and I interviewed EXC 170-pound champion Jake Shields and asked him why all the buzz regarding KJ Noons vs. Nick Diaz was being squashed. Shields claimed in the interview that Noons wasn’t all that interested in fighting Diaz in a re-match and that he didn’t think the fight would take place. Remember, it was Noons and Diaz who got into a major altercation at an Elite XC event in Hawaii. That altercation drew mega-heat and was the one sure-fire hot program that the company had managed to stumble into. Naturally, given the bad luck and mismanagement of Elite XC, they killed any sort of push for Noons/Diaz II because of criticism they received from certain MMA fans who claimed that it was too pro-wrestling-ish for their tastes. Do you think Dana White sits around in his Las Vegas office and worries about whether or not some of the fights and hype that he engages in is too pro-wrestling-ish while he’s busy counting the millions of dollars his organization is making? Of course not.

After killing any sort of heat for Noons/Diaz II, Elite XC has publicly done an about-face on the feud and suddenly it’s as if they have hit microwave mode and are screaming, “We need to re-heat this up!” However, the company apparently doesn’t have much leverage or influence on Mark Dion, the manager of KJ Noons. Facing the prospects of Noons/Diaz II not being able to get booked, Jared Shaw of Elite XC issued a deadline to Noons and Dion of 5 PM PST yesterday to accept the fight with Nick Diaz or else. As expected, Dion scoffed at Shaw’s comments and no progress has been made whatsoever for the re-match being booked for the promotion’s Miami show on October 4th for CBS. You read this correctly… Elite XC issued an ultimatum, mostly through Internet media channels, to Mark Dion regarding Noons/Diaz II. Can you possibly imagine Dana White putting up with any of this crap and groveling with a fighter’s manager publicly to get a fight booked? Of course you can’t. He wouldn’t embarrass himself like this, and you know it.

What’s Elite XC going to do to KJ Noons? Ice him out of the MMA business? He can go do boxing. Pay Noons extra to fight Diaz on October 4th? Then you’re rewarding his bad behavior. By the way, there’s this odd and curious situation in which Noons was doing both boxing and MMA fighting for… promoter Gary Shaw, who is now simply a ‘consultant’ for Elite XC. So, we have Shaw’s son playing the role of ‘bad cop’ here and yet Noons may end up doing business on the boxing side with the father?

The comedy of errors from Elite XC wouldn’t be so funny if the situation wasn’t so dire or so sad. MMA fans in recent years have seen the tell-tale signs of when a promotion is floundering and about to go about of business. It always seems to be one bad news item after another. One only needs to look at what happened to PRIDE to figure out that when you start running out of money and leverage, eventually you start losing power with fighters and managers over what fights you can book. Once you lose the fear factor and leverage over fighters, then you’re nothing more than another promoter in the business. When the aura of being a major player is gone, so are the long-term prospects of surviving in the MMA business.