What He Allegedly Did Was Wrong, but Thiago Silva Was Still Right

What used to be known as the tide of public opinion is now more like a flash flood. If you get swept up in it, grab hold of something, anything at all, and hang on for dear life. It is powerful, but will abate shortly.

That might explain the sounds of supplication wafting off Park Avenue Friday morning. You could hear Roger Goodell pleading: Just get me to the weekend. Get me to the time when everyone turns their attention back to jet sweeps and Richard Sherman.

The NFL is by no means out of the woods on its self-perpetuated domestic violence crisis, especially now that sponsors are tapping pens on their checkbooks. But last week's fever is broken, and it appears commissioner Goodell will keep his job.

That's how it goes. Just hang on and ride it out. Goodell knows that, even if he would never say so in an interview.

But you know who did say so in an interview? The MMA community's very own Thiago Silva.

"People will forget," he said Sept. 8 on The MMA Hour broadcast with host Ariel Helwani. "They always do."

Silva is completely correct on that point, especially in MMA. In fact, it's already happening.

Silva refers, as you may or may not recall, to his own little alleged domestic incident, just a small matter involving an armed confrontation with and death threats against his estranged wife, a protracted standoff with a SWAT team at Silva's Florida home and his subsequent tasing and arrest.

That was in February. The whole thing was churned up again earlier this month when the UFC reinstated the light heavyweight exactly one day after a judge dropped all charges (which at one point included attempted murder) related to the incident. It was also three days before TMZ dropped that video bomb on Ray Rice and the NFL.

Dropping charges (as happened with Rice as well as Silva) is not the same as being found not guilty. In Silva's case, the charges were dropped because Silva's wife didn't cooperate with the investigation. Oh, and during said investigation she abruptly boarded a one-way flight to Brazil. Gone. Smoke on the wind. A little suspicious? Maybe to those who don't know what really happened.

"I know a lot more of the story and what went on," UFC President Dana White said in a near-perfect impression of the NFL's early comments on Rice, but with no apparent trace of irony. "If you take his side of the story, her side of the story, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but he went through the process and he wasn't charged with anything. The guy should have the ability to make a living."

(It should also be noted that White originally, mistakenly said on the UFC's official website that Silva was "acquitted" of the charges, when in fact the charges were simply dropped. Evaluate that as you will.)

At the time, not long after the arrest, Silva's own lawyer, Scott Saul, said the case was one of "classic aggravated assault." Again, this was Silva's lawyer speaking. His attorney. Not a fake attorney or anything like that. Totally real, and openly angling for his client to be charged with aggravated assault. Go ahead, read the article.

And now, here we are, listening to Silva tell us that we'll forget, not that he regrets anything that allegedly happened, not that he has a lot of fence-mending to do with this wife, not that he has challenges he needs to address in his life. Just a bad impression of a bad birthday-party hypnotist.

It's just sad that, a week or so later, the public is proving him correct. We, the MMA fans and media, have already started to forget. What does that say about this sport, its fanbase and its concern over allegations—which the defense attorney himself labeled as "classic aggravated assault," mind you, and which a full SWAT team can directly corroborate—of domestic crime?

Probably nothing good. And it seems the UFC is banking on similar tendencies. Right after Silva's arrest, White said Silva "would never fight in the UFC again."

With that in mind, when White explained his reinstatement of Silva, he was defending himself against his own statements as much as anything else.

It's why there were no whispered prayers—much less discussions to change the decision—to be heard after Silva's re-entry, despite the fact that it coincided with the Rice revelations and a sudden public awakening around domestic violence in sports. And no grabbing for higher ground, either, mainly because there was no real flood. What you heard instead was more like the slurping noise you get when you reach the bottom of your beverage, followed by the tinkling of ice cubes that indicates you are quite ready for another.

Why is all this the case? Is it because MMA is a minor sport? Is it because the NFL stories have eclipsed those of the UFC? Is it because MMA fans are sadly but surely desensitized to watching these sorts of slugs ooze out of their daily news cycle? Is it because Silva is a willing fighter and proven bench player in a paper-thin light heavyweight division? Is it because, in this audio-visual world of ours, Silva's case lacks the smoking gun of a grainy video or crazy voice mail?

It's probably a blend of all of those, to some extent. 

Is the UFC the only MMA promotion to make this sort of decision? Oh, good heavens, no. There's healthy precedent. See, for example, one War Machine, the man Bellator (then under different management) not only reinstated after he left jail, but actually built a marketing campaign around. As we know, he's now out of the promotion and awaiting trial on attempted murder and many other things after allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend and a man she knew.

So there's no one single culprit here. Everyone looks the other way, or shrugs, or sighs, or forgets, or something. That's the way it is for out-of-competition violence in MMA.

But there's a larger issue here. As awareness of domestic abuse grows in the sports world, as it seems it's sure to do, you have to wonder if a bigger flood is coming, and if it does come, what MMA might have left to grab on to, or whether the whole thing might just wash up on some god-foresaken island.

Scott Harris writes about MMA and other things for Bleacher Report and other places. For more, follow @ScottHarrisMMA.