Anthony Pettis can't see Anderson Silva 'consenting to cheating'

Anderson Silva, the former UFC middleweight champion and surefire Hall of Famer, has been under the nasty cloud of suspicion since his positive tests for steroids before and after his UFC 183 bout with Nick Diaz. But there are some high-profile people that think his issues aren't as simple as they look. One such defender is UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis, who will put up his title against Rafael dos Anjos this weekend at UFC 185.

Showtime spoke to the media today, and he just isn't convinced that Silva would willingly do that sort of thing (via MMA Fighting):

"I just can't see him consenting to cheating. I don't think that's something he would do. I mean, when you're at that high of a level, people want to see you back, there's money to be made if he fights again, so somebody had to be in his ear or somebody had to be giving him stuff that he didn't know what it was. I hope he had no idea what it was."

Pettis also believes that fans, especially ones that don't follow the sport that closely, are jumping the gun and blanketing Silva with accusations that don't hold up when you consider his history:

"I mean, that's a guy, you can't take away what he's done for the sport for one mistake that maybe he didn't even make."

...

"The casual fans (are doing that), you know? Like, ‘oh, he's been cheating his whole career.' They have no idea, watching him in the UFC when it was just his first fight, they don't know what it takes to get where he's at. So people are so quick and easy to judge, and nobody knows what's going on."

Silva was coming off a nasty broken leg and was out for a year before he fought Diaz, which has led many to speculate that the positive tests may have had something to do with his recovery and not evidence that Anderson was cheating. He will stand in front of the Nevada State Athletic Commission later this month to plead his case.