While not officially confirmed by Josh Barnett himself, numerous reports are suggesting that the California State Athletic Commission has suspended Barnett due to a failed pre-fight test.
According to Loretta Hunt:
Multiple sources have told Sherdog.com that the California State Athletic Commission will not license Josh Barnett after a positive test result. Calls to Affliction Entertainment were not immediately returned. The CSAC said a comprehensive statement would be issued Wednesday.
As a result, the main event of the upcoming Affliction: Trilogy fight card between Barnett and Fedor Emelianenko is not going to happen.
Reports are that Affliction has offered the chance to replace Barnett to both Bobby Lashley and Vitor Belfort. According to Hunt, Lashley had not been contacted and didn’t seem to interested in taking the fight on short notice.
Vitor Belfort, on the other hand, is reportedly considering the offer. “The Phenom” is currently scheduled to fight Jorge Santiago at middleweight on the Trilogy fight card, so he presumably is already been training for a match. Fighting the world’s best fighter at heavyweight on a week’s notice is a whole other prospect however.
The California State Athletic Commission said they will release a comprehensive statement about the situation later today, so stay tuned to MMA HQ for further details as they emerge.
** UPDATE **
It appears that Barnett did, in fact, test positive for steroids. With this being his second offense, Barnett is looking at a lengthy suspension and will probably have to spend the rest of his career fighting in Japan.
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If this is true it will certainly spell death for Affliction. I doubt many people will shell out the $50 for this event with the main event being changed at the last minute. Lashley doesn’t have the MMA experience to compete with Fedor. Vitor will give up way to much size not to mention skill to make it interesting. What happens if Vitor catches Fedor and KO’s him? That would be the same as what happened to Elite and Kimbo. I really doubt Affliction will put on another show after this regardless of what the main event ends up being.
Wow, what a piece of chicken sh-t. How do any of these guys even expect to pass these drug tests anymore? unless they know they will get caught and not be able to fight…against Fedor, I can see why. I think this is officially the beginning of the end for Affliction. Too bad they can’t get Tito in to fight Fedor. He’d get his *** whooped and then ***** that he didn’t have enough time to train (like 2 years), I miss watching him take a beatin…
on one hand im thinking “WTF Barnett is about to have the biggest fight of his career and hes ******** it up”, and on the other hand im thinking “has Barnett ever competed on a level playing field” im kind of assuming its roids, and this is not the first time hes been caught so. we all know that Barnett could very well have been juicing the entire time he was fighting in Japan because they are more then willing to look the other way if its the right fighter.
lol head back to japan joshy boy!!