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I'm down in Tennessee for Christmas holidays and last night my mom poked her head out of her sewing room and asked me what was up with the UFC dude who (allegedly) killed his wife. At that point I realized that the Justin Levens story was pretty big news - well, pretty big at the moment. I'm sure about 4 days from now it'll be dropped and forgotten by the mainstream media, but for now it's in the 24 hour news loop. At first I had made the decision that I was basically gonna ignore the Levens story because hey, you guys come here for dick n fart jokes and the last time I tried having some shits and giggles over a fighter's death I felt dirty for about a month and a half. The only other option was to go all preachy on y'all, and I think I already used up all my preachy points for December with my Fight for the Troops post. That being said, I'm gonna get a little preachy now so if you don't wanna read that then feel free to skip this post. The general angle a lot of people are bringing to the table re: Levens is that the media is exaggerating his cage fighter resume trying to make him seem like he's way bigger than he is. Basically, the media is trying to forge a connection between MMA and (alleged) wife-killing psychos. So in response there's a lot of blogs pointing out that Levens hasn't been a UFC / WEC / IFL fighter for a while and hasn't fought anywhere in over a year and so on and so on and so on. Come the fuck on. Levens was an MMA fighter, no matter how much he may or may not have sucked. People are just trying to downplay his involvement because they don't want people to associate MMA with him like they did with Chris Benoit and the WWE. And while Levens might have gone down as a footnote in MMA history if he hadn't decided to (allegedly) shoot his sleeping wife in the chest and then off himself as well, there's still a pretty decent link between what he (allegedly) did and the sport he dedicated his life to. Levens was addicted to painkillers. His last blip on the MMA radar prior to this was regarding a suspension for painkillers (he hit a whopping 10,000ng/ml on the dope-o-meter), and police found a whackload of painkillers and anti-depressants in his condo. We've talked about how horrible painkiller addiction is, and just from the reaction via the Jackals I've learned that it's a lot more prevalent than you'd expect. And why do you think Justin Levens was on these pills? I don't have an extensive medical history sitting in front of me, but is it anywhere near far fetched to assume that his addiction stems from injuries sustained from training and participating in mixed martial arts? I'm not about to say that MMA is 'responsible' for what happened with Levens and his wife the same way the WWE was with Chris Benoit. But everyone in the MMA scene seems to be reacting to the media hysterics with denial hysterics all of their own. Levens was a mixed martial artist who was hooked on painkillers. Pain med addiction is a serious problem in our sport, and it's only getting worse. What happened with Levens was obviously a rare and horrible outcome, and it's not like we're expecting James Irvin and Joe Riggs to go off like ticking time bombs any second now. But we might want to maybe consider looking into the painkiller issue. I don't know what can be done, but at this point they're a bigger elephant in the room than steroids are.  Here's just a word about allegedly. The ostensible reason that the media throws in the word allegedly when reporting is fear of a defamation law suit. Obiously if you make a written statement that Levens killed his wife and it's not true, he could sue you for libel which is defamation in written form (slander being defamation in oral form). However, US law is very clear that one can not defame the dead, i.e., a dead person (to be more accurate the legal entity called the estate) has no cause of action for defamation. Thus, you don't need to throw in allegedly. Is the law in Canada different?  Pain killers dont push people to commit suicide. Depression does. Levens was mostlikly dealing with severe depression. Depression is serious shit. The guy had more than enough reasons to suffer from this mental illness : Cronic pain, suicide of his friend, financial problems and an MMA career turning to shit (lost his 5 last fights). My guess is pain killer addiction is just a side effect of the real problem : Depression.  Pain killers dont push people to commit suicide, but they do make it a hell of a lot easier to perform the act. A ridiculously high number of suicide attempts are preceded by getting hopped up on one's favorite intoxicant. In Leven's case, that intoxicant was painkillers. I'm not too worried about lawsuits, I just wanted to make clear that as of now, they haven't conclusively confirmed that he did it. I'm assuming he did based on the facts that we do know, and i'm happy to eat it if I'm wrong. But I don't want to mislead people into thinking the facts of the case aren't the facts of the case  It's "alleged" because there has not been a conclusive determination yet (i.e., no confession, no conviction, no final report for the police investigation). It's not protecting one's ass; it's simple fuckin logic. " It's "alleged" because there has not been a conclusive determination yet (i.e., no confession, no conviction, no final report for the police investigation). It's not protecting one's ass; it's simple fuckin logic."You know shit about media and the law.  It's alleged because all of the facts haven't come out yet. It's just like the Duke Lacrosse team that allegely raped a girl. In the end, we found out that she was full of crap. But everyone was ready to hang those players by a rope at the nearest tree once the news broke out. It's alleged because someone wrote it in a ledger. Duh. Actually, I know a fair bit of shit about the law. But I'm not really concerned with the law you see. What you seem to be lacking is some simple common sense. You're overthinking it. So take your ill-placed unnecessary wikipedia legal analysis to someone who would be impressed by it.  ahh, comments threads. nowhere else can people take a considered post about something rather serious and turn it into a moronic, off-topic pissing contest with such alacrity. even at the food court in the mall there's some accepted social protocols. piss away!anyways, to the actual point of the post ryan put up, i've been unable to say anything about it either on my blog or any other forum...when i read the news my heart just dropped. MMA will get slapped around for it, but it'll be nothing compared to what his family and his wife's family is going through. its just depressing. this whole season has been depressing. winter is that way i guess. and in re: depression, above, that is some serious shit. Apologies. Re: Ryan's post, I originally opened this comment thread to say I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments.  I don't know about you guys but I actually *AM* kind of expecting James Irvin and Joe Riggs to lose their shit. No way Jose on Joe Riggs. He has a pretty hot wife. If I had someone like that I wouldn't be thinking about wacking myself. I would put my money on Irvin :P I will admit that I know more about opiate(pain killer) addiction than anyone should. I have fought opiate addiction for the past 12- 14 years. And, it definitely does NOT make people go out and start killing. Though, it does have some of the WORST side effects and withdrawal symptoms. It is difficult for people that are not educated in this area or understand what it means to be addicted to opiates or any substance for that matter. I have had a couple members IM me in the past about this subject. PLEASE feel free to send me an IM with any questions you may have about the topic. If yourself or someone close to you is dealing with issues associated with opiate addiction, dont hesitate to contact me. Lie I said, I got MORE than enough experience with opiate addiction. of course I was being facetious (fightlinker means never having to say you're sorry...), it's a lot more likely that the driving force behind this tragedy was stress over lack of money, and a history of exposure to domestic violence. it's very, very sad.  Stop.....Novel time.People aren't disowning his MMA career, he just never had one worth mentioning. It's like being afraid the NBA is going to be taken down by a bench warmer. My experience finding out about it was having a co-worker inform me about it who thought he was Chris Leben. Then another co-worker thought it was Justin Eilers. Then another co-worker said the first name was Justin but it wasn't Eilers. So finally we all gathered around my computer to find out for sure through Google and let out a collective "who?" Chris Benoit was a big name to people who watched his non-sport. So the half-dozen pro wrestling fans who watch the news and the 8 of them who know how to read will buy papers and generate ratings. The people who don't know who he is will be impressed by pundits talking of his status and see that it is a big deal. There is no way to stretch the truth into saying Justin Levens was anything other than a minor name fighter famous for an unholy drug test failure and ironically fighting the other MMA fighter who died young in the UFC. That story will not generate interest for as long as Chris Benoit's did. And this happened really close to Christmas so conservative pundits are too busy pissing and moaning about the lack of Jesus over Santa to notice. A Couture family murder-suicide would have Dana sweating. I don't even think he's had his secretary issued a press release on this so far, to show how little he gives a shit as the internet is acting like this is MMArmageddon. The worst thing that is going to happen out of this incident is boxing columnists nobody takes seriously will bring up the tragedy as a reason MMA is evil following the paragraph on Douglas Dedge and Sam Vasquez. Then people will mention Kassim Ouma and James Butler to shut them up. But MMA is worth too much money now for the old scare tactics of the late 90s to work anymore. The highly unlikely event of a UFC fighter being beaten to death on live television is the only thing that Dana White needs to fear. Not the outside actions of former fighters.
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