Nick Diaz can finally plan a return to the fight business.
That's the positive. But it couldn't be that easy. No way. It couldn't come until the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) managed to put him through one last indignity. The regulatory body that unconscionably abandoned its own guidelines to hand him an unprecedented five-year ban for marijuana decided that in order to accept a reduced sentence, Diaz would have to eat crow publicly.
And that meant that it was not NAC but Diaz who had to confess wrongdoing, even though the commission was the one making the real concession. NAC forced Diaz to admit that he wrongly used the Fifth Amendment in response to questions regarding a series of drug tests around the time of his January 2014 fight with Anderson Silva.
That was the trade: Help us save face, and we'll hand you your career back. Instead of a five-year suspension, the penalty would be reduced by 70 percent to 18 months. Instead of waiting until he's 37 years old to fight again, he could be back by this August.
You can't blame Diaz for what followed. This is a man's livelihood at stake.
"After conferring with new counsel, I determined I wrongfully invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to relevant questions posed by members of the Commission..." his deposition reads.
According to Diaz's original attorney Lucas Middlebrook, who spoke to MMA Fighting regarding the reduced suspension, that phraseology was a condition of the settlement. Middlebrook said:
It became apparent that the NAC wanted the Fifth Amendment issue as part of any negotiated settlement and therefore the choice was between lengthy litigation or having Nick resume his career this summer. While I, along with my team, still fully stand by Nick's invocation of his Constitutional rights and maintain it was the right legal decision, our main focus was resuming Nick's career. I truly hope moving forward that due process of the law is a reality and not just a legal catchphrase.
In other words, NAC was more interested in bullying Diaz and in saving face than correcting its mistake with dignity.
This despite the fact that there is actually debate whether he truly failed a test since he passed two conducted by WADA-approved labs and failed a third in a test conducted by a non-WADA lab, one that doesn't follow the most stringent protocols.
This despite the fact Diaz actually used the Fifth Amendment correctly, as attorney and Inside MMA correspondent Amy Dardashtian wrote at the time of Diaz's original punishment:
Commissioner Pat Lundvall insists on asking Diaz a series of questions and makes him plead the fifth to each question. Why would she do such a thing? We soon find out. Lundvall says that because Diaz pled the fifth, she may infer a negative answer to all of her specific questions. For example, she asked whether Diaz consumed marijuana on the night of the fight. Because he pled the fifth, under her absurd interpretation of [NAC] guidelines, this means his answer is yes. Pleading the fifth, does not entitle the [NAC] to insert incriminating answers into leading questions. The Fifth Amendment is designed to AVOID self-incrimination.
It was only under the threat of potential litigation that NAC even took up settlement proceedings. But faced with a crumbling hand, it chose one last power play, placing the continued castigation of Diaz ahead of righting a wrong. That was made crystal clear during the hearing at the Grant Sawyer Office Building in Las Vegas Tuesday.
The entire consideration of Diaz's settlement agreement, from start to finish, took 50 seconds. The NAC didn't publicly disclose the reduced penalty in the meeting and then wouldn't furnish it to media on the scene. When it finally did, it offered no comment regarding the whole thing.
Where was the public disclosure? Where was the transparency? The NAC sure took its time publicly spanking Diaz when it handed him a five-year ban. That hearing, which took place last September, took three hours, 33 minutes, longer than an average college football game. But when it came time to admit its own wrongdoing, it didn't last the length of a commercial break.
That goes to serve my theory about the penalty in the first place—that it was an unconscionable act of injustice largely pursued out of anger that Diaz had flouted the commission's authority. That was justice unchecked, and Tuesday's hearing was another exercise of power tarnishing the commission's credibility.
The Nevada Athletic Commission is supposed to be the gold standard, the regulatory body that best espouses the rules of fair play in combat sports like MMA and boxing. Instead, it serves as a reminder that the watchmen must always be watched.
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