Last week, I suggested the UFC should have taken a little more time before embracing Thiago Silva following his release from a criminal investigation for multiple counts of armed assault and for resisting arrest SWAT team style. I didn’t accuse him of being guilty, I merely suggested the UFC’s actions failed to sufficiently account for the public’s heightened revulsion against domestic violence, and that a thoughtful internal investigation might have helped counter a public perception problem. I even submitted the article to Reddit in order to gauge a reaction, and got beaten to a pulp on that tumbling wall of MMA cynicism.
After all, we are compelled by the United States Constitution to regard Thiago as perfectly innocent because a prosecutor’s office zipped its lips and impliedly said so. Of course, a prosecutor blew it in the Ray Rice matter, and his career got sent to employment prison anyway.
But even though Silva’s wife has fled the country and we still don’t know why the charges related to the other alleged victim disappeared with her, Thaysa hasn’t lost her Internet connection, or her ability to communicate about her estranged husband.
She just released two videos of Thiago allegedly armed with a gun and high on cocaine. According to a translation by BJPenn.com, the first went as follows:
Thiago : Why did you call the police, love? I did nothing. Why are you filming?
Thiago : Love, why are you doing this? Talk to me.
Thaysa : Thiago, to see too. Give me the weapon please, I am here.
Thiago : So turn off the camera. Just because you are hiding a guy up there. You think I’m stupid.
Thaysa: That guy, James?
Thiago : I’m not an idiot. Mor, you are putting this light in my face so I can’t see anything. Stop, please.
Thaysa : No, Thiago. Because if I die this is proof.
Thiago : It proves what? You will not die, you’re lying. There’s someone here and he will do something, I’m not stupid.
Thaysa : Thiago, one day you will kill me here because of this addiction.
Thiago : I will not kill you and you’re doing something here –
The second video is available here.
Yes, that’s Thiago Silva, and he might even be holding that “silver colored revolver” she referenced in her complaint to the police. The one she claimed he pointed at her, then put in her mouth after she screamed. He isn’t screaming or being violent, but if that’s a gun he’s holding while discussing his wife hiding a man upstairs, we can assume the situation was potentially dangerous.
No telling if any of that is true, but the story isn’t going away. And it is uncertain whether the UFC ever talked to Thaysa or the other alleged victim directly, or saw the videos. Roger Goodell has probably permanently lost his credibility over that mysterious missing elevator tape fiasco. Now, the UFC might have taken steps to avoid a similar problem.
This isn’t an “I told you so.” It is an “anyone with a tiny sense of objective detachment knew this sort of problem was a possibility … you so.”
Watch the video here, if you want.
*Update: Thiago Silva has been released by the UFC.
