His fighting style was slow, grinding, even a bit boring. He exploded onto the mixed martial arts scene in 2011, going undefeated for his first four years and signing a contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the sport’s premier promotion company, in 2014. Theodorou was already a widely admired sports figure when he took up the cause of medical marijuana.
DIARY OF AN 8 BIT WARRIOR PROFESSIONAL
He fought in both jurisdictions, and was planning to seek further exemptions when he was diagnosed with cancer in January.Īccording to his lawyer, Eric Magraken, he was the first professional athlete in North America to receive such an exemption, and very likely the first in the world. He won approval from the British Columbia Athletic Commission in 2020, and a year later from a similar body in Colorado. “Anyone with the same kind of injury would be able to take a handful of Vicodin to go and fight and it wouldn’t be an issue.”ĭrug rules for sports like mixed martial arts are largely set at the state and provincial level, so he had to tailor his pitch over and over to address different regulations. “What I’m trying to strive for is an even playing field,” he told Forbes in 2021.
He built his case meticulously, collecting research and statements from doctors and lawyers and documenting his own fruitless efforts to find an already permitted alternative, like opioids. Known for his thoughtful, deliberative fighting style, he applied that same approach to his campaign to win permission to use marijuana during training and preparation for a fight. Theodorou, who suffered from bilateral neuropathy, which caused tingling pain in his hands and arms, didn’t want to be next. In 2019 the PGA Tour suspended the golfer Matt Every for three months after he tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and in 2021 the American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson was effectively disqualified from the Tokyo Olympics after THC was found in her bloodstream.
DIARY OF AN 8 BIT WARRIOR PRO
His brother, Michael, said the cause was colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver.Ĭountless pro athletes are said to use marijuana - for pain, for anxiety, to focus - but most sports prohibit or heavily regulate its use. 11 at his home in Woodbridge, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. Elias Theodorou, a cerebral, charismatic mixed martial arts fighter who campaigned to change his sport’s drug rules and is widely believed to be the first professional athlete to receive a therapeutic exemption to use marijuana, died on Sept.
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