I am in San Jose, Calif. right now on assignment and a lot of influential people in this business are just burying California State Athletic Commission executive director Armando Garcia. He wasn’t popular to begin with but now even some of his supporters have turned on him in regards to his decision to pull Nick Diaz from Saturday's EliteXC/Strikeforce show.

Right now, I am going to hold off on making a comment. The reason is because I think it’s too early to jump to conclusions. We’ve heard EliteXC and Gary Shaw’s side, but I’d really like to hear Garcia’s side. The problem is, Garcia is being silent at a time he needs to be speaking up. CSAC is publicly funded by taxpayers in California and as such, there should be complete and total transparency in CSAC’s dealings.

During Thursday’s EliteXC/Strikeforce press conference, Diaz mentioned that when he went for his pre-fight medical exam that a female attendant looked at his record and brought up his past suspension for marijuana and that she warned him. According to Diaz, at that point he felt like the right thing to do was to be completely honest when filling out his forms and so he apprised the commission of his use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. He expressed that several other fighters getting their exams done did the same.

Shaw said that Diaz was punished even though he had not had a pre-fight test nor had tested positive for the fight. But when Diaz had his pre-fight medical approximately 2-3 weeks ago, did he submit any kind of blood sample? Is there any chance that Diaz somehow might have tested positive? I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but I just have a feeling we aren’t getting the full story.

I also wanted to comment on those who have ripped Diaz for being a Cannabis Club member. In talking to some California residents yesterday, apparently getting a prescription for marijuana is fairly easy to do in the state. That said, I support Diaz’s stance that he expressed yesterday in that he would rather treat his ADD and ADHD with marijuana as opposed to amphetamines. I went to school with a lot of kids that had ADD and for the life of me I never understood the concept of addressing hyper-activity through the use of speed (Ritalin).

I know I just opened up a can of worms for myself with that last statement because I’m not a doctor, but I’m just looking at things from a lay perspective and taking a common sense approach.

Tim Sylvia’s reported departure from the UFC…

I’m really curious to see what’s next for Tim Sylvia. I don’t care what his critics will say, but losing Sylvia was the last thing the UFC heavyweight division needed. With Randy Couture and Mirko Cro Cop having departed and Andrei Arlovski now a free agent, the UFC heavyweight division has some serious depth issues.

The future of the division looks bright with Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, and Cain Velasquez, but they need an immediate contributor. The division desperately needs someone who can come in and be a top contender right away. I know they were far a part on money and a lot of bad blood exists, but I think the UFC and Josh Barnett are a good match. If I was the UFC, I’d present a new and better offer to Barnett.

The WEC make the USA Today…

That’s right, Wednesday’s WEC event received cursory coverage from the USA Today. Click here to read what was written.

If major newspapers were smart, they’d stopped burying MMA coverage on their websites and start giving it more complete coverage in their print editions. If you aren’t going to cover the sport the right way, why cover it at all?

The newspaper industry is dying for a variety of reasons. But I think the biggest reason is because of a lack of compelling content. The publishers at many major newspapers are simply out of touch. Giving full coverage to MMA isn’t going to hurt a paper and you never know, it might even help it sell some more newspapers!

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Sam Caplan

Lead Writer/Editor - ProElite.com

SamCaplan.ProElite.com