Kevin Iole at Yahoo! reports that CSAC has suspended Ken Shamrock after he tested positive for three types of steroids.  Of course, this is no surprise.

What I wonder about is the EliteXC event in Fort Lauderdale last October, when Ken was ‘cut’ before the show and could not fight Kimbo Slice, setting off a chain of events: Kimbo gets knocked out by Seth Petruzelli,
allegations of fight fixing, bad press, EliteXC is unable to secure additional funding, Casey who contributes here and is my partner in crime gets laid off, I lose my biggest photo client, all of my good friends at EliteXC and ProElite lose their jobs.

Now, I’m not saying Ken Shamrock caused EliteXC to fail.  But I think he sped up the demise just a bit.  EliteXC might have at least had the resources to continue until their end of year event in November where Robbie Lawler would defend his belt against Joe Villaseñor and Nick Diaz would fight Eddie Alvarez for the lightweight title.

Do you wonder if he feared he might test positive in Florida?  Or perhaps he didn’t juice and just feared losing poorly?  Or maybe he just wanted more money to fight Kimbo after learning how much Slice was slated to earn.

Or he really did cut himself pummeling before a big payday.  Who knows.  Well, he does.

But we don’t.

Again, I don’t think Ken Shamrock killed EliteXC but I am going to attach his face to my disappointment.  Assigning the failure of a multi-million dollar company to him is giving him too much credit, too much power.  I think Shamrock’s image, a showman, a tainted legend, aging and pumped full of drugs just to get going but then gassing in the end, works for my memory of ProElite/EliteXC.

Done.