Matt Riddle would be 9-3 if Marijuana metabolites were not on the banned substance list for athletic commissions, and now he has a 7-3-2 record because the athletic commissions are searching an athlete’s body for something that only enhances the performance of some lady with dreads knitting hemp carpets at a Phish concert. That’s the way I look at it, not that Riddle screwed up and tested positive. Riddle wasn’t hotboxing his room while he was warming up, dude stopped smoking three weeks before the fight even went down. It may be my extremely biased view on weed, but the problem is in the athletic commission, not in the user. That’s just my opinion though.
Now Riddle is searching for his first fight outside the UFC in his entire career, and it looks like he’s contemplating quite a few offers from around the industry. As he courts his next cage to fight in, “Chipper” went on quite a rant on The MMA Hour that pretty much puts the UFC on blast in a big way. Light one up and read on, but only for medicinal reasons.
“When they’ve already fired Jon Fitch, I think they were just looking for a reason to get rid of me,”
“I wasn’t expecting to fail that drug test. You know, I quit [smoking] 21 days out. But after me calling out Joe Silva because he didn’t give me Dan Hardy, and then me not going out there and brawling, and failing the drug test, they were going to fire me. So whatever, I’m good. I got fight offers. I’m good to go.”
“I already did that with the UFC for the last five years. They kind of owned me,” he said — the welterweight considers his newfound sense of freedom a “fresh breath of air.”
“It kind of gives me the chance to have fun on the regional circuit,”
“It might sound, maybe not the greatest, but I’m excited to probably fight lesser talented fighters than I was in the UFC. Just because the UFC, to get there you usually have to be on like a five-fight knockout spree, and you usually have to be doing big things on the regional circuit to get the call.
“I think it’s going to be a good way for me to keep developing as a fighter and showcase my skills.”
“Yeah. Honestly, I think the UFC, they wanted me to go out against Che, they wanted me to stand in the center of Octagon and just throw down. And I would’ve done that, but I’m not going to do that in his backyard in London, when I know that even if I take him down three times a round and pass his guard every round, they’re still going to give him the scorecard. I couldn’t take a chance like that.
“But you’ve got to look at guys like Dave Herman. Three fight losing streak, gets knocked out like three times in a row, fails two drug tests for weed, and he’s still in the UFC. And I don’t take anything from Herman, I’m sure he’s a great guy. But I don’t know. I think that’s very hypocritical, and those are politics right there. That’s not good business. That’s you guys getting together, doing a little pow-wow, and being like, ‘Let’s get rid of Riddle. He’s fighting more conservative. He’s going out there for wins. He’s fighting more educated. And I’d rather hire a couple guys from Australia or the U.K. that just brawl, and pay them half as much.'”
“What I see happening is, a year or two from now the UFC calls me back after I’ve won probably like five or six fights, hopefully. And I’ll probably, at the time, say, ‘No.’ Because I really don’t like the direction they’re taking the company. They’re firing high-level talent so they can have lower level talent just scrap, and they’d rather have a brawl than a good technical fight. I think that’s going to be their downfall, because the fans are getting more educated. They’re getting smarter, and they don’t want to just see a slugfest and two retarded guys with brain damage bleeding everywhere.
“Don’t get me wrong,” “That’s good to have when two guys are evenly matched. When two guys are evenly matched, when you’ve got two Division I wrestlers that can’t take each other down and they are left in a slugfest, that’s what happens. But then to have me fight Che Mills, and then kind of expect me to stand in the pocket with a world class kickboxer who has knocked out other world class kickboxers, it’s just stupid. You’re asking me to get hurt. And basically, I didn’t. I fought smart, and I lost my job.”
“A lot of lawyers think I have a lawsuit for wrongful termination,” “And, you know, I’m not really trying to go that route, because I like to fight and I’m not really trying to bellyache about it. But at the same time, if didn’t fail a drug test, and something was added to my urine, like Creatine and THC, or something like that, then I would like to know. Because I just think it was just really convenient. Then even after my fight, Dana White was making comments, ‘Oh, maybe if people started fighting more exciting, unlike Riddle lately.’ He did a couple interviews and mentioned how I haven’t been fighting exciting, and then just so happens, a couple days later I fail a drug test and I get fired. There’s just a couple variables, it just seems really fishy.”
“It’s a losing battle they’re fighting,” “It always has been, and I don’t know why they just don’t quit, or just get educated. That’s the hardest part. It’s a bunch of senior citizens that don’t really know anything about the drug or anything about the people that use it, or the culture. And they just look at it a certain way, they think it’s like a dirty thing to do, and you should just go to a pharmacy and get some pills and you’ll be fine. I’m not that guy. I’m a natural kind of guy. You’ll never get me to do that.”
This is just a small battle in a larger war, and somehow Matt Riddle has become a weird, super-happy martyr. Read more scary things about the pharmaceutical industry and marijuana here.
[Source]
