Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion, Anderson Silva, will be eligible to make his return to mixed martial arts (MMA) this November after reaching a deal with United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
“The Spider” was popped for performance-enhancing drugs ahead of his Kelvin Gastelum fight at UFC Shanghai last fall, the second timethe Brazilian pissed dirty in his UFC career. Silva, however, maintained his innocence and eventually proved his positive result stemmed from tainted supplements, hence the reduced sentence.
“I am vindicated,” Silva said in a prepared statement (via Ariel Helwani). “The past nine months have been extremely difficult. I felt like my career and everything I had worked so hard for was dying and my future was hanging in the balance.”
Anderson Silva cuts deal with USADA for UFC return - ‘My legacy is restored’