Nick Diaz accepts one-year suspension for whereabouts violation

Nick Diaz has accepted a one-year USADA suspension, but the fan favorite could return to the Octagon much earlier than expected.

Last year, UFC fan favorite Nick Diaz violated the terms of USADA’s drug testing protocol by refusing to post his whereabouts for three separate out-of-competition drug tests.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency requires all UFC fighters to provide updates on their whereabouts in order to enforce random drug tests across the board.

“The accumulation of three Whereabouts Failures within a 12-month period constitutes an anti-doping policy violation,” according to USADA, which means Diaz suffered an infraction for his failure to comply on three separate occasions in 2017.

On Monday, MMA Fighting’s Alexander K. Lee reported that Diaz had reached an agreement with USADA and accepted a one-year suspension for his anti-doping policy violation. You can check out the full statement here.

The good news, for Diaz fans, is that his USADA suspension is retroactive from April 19, 2017, which was the date of his first whereabouts violation. This means that the Stockton brawler could return to the Octagon as early next week, although that’s extremely unlikely.

According to UFC president Dana White, however, Diaz has teased at a comeback later in the year. The Californian hasn’t fought since January 2015, when he dropped a unanimous decision to Anderson Silva at UFC 183. That bout was overturned to a No Contest after Silva tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and was suspended for one year. Diaz, 34, was also suspended for 18 months after testing positive for marijuana metabolites for the third time of his career.