On June 12th, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis infamously threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres while tripping on LSD. Former UFC fighter Blake Bilder took the same drug but didn’t have the same success when he fought high at UFC 289.
According to a new podcast appearance, the Contender Series 2022 signee was on LSD when he fought Kyle Nelson on the undercard of UFC 289: Nunes vs. Aldana in Vancouver, British Columbia. Bilder was in an extremely bad place in his life and was already facing criminal charges in Australia over drug mule allegations. So the obvious thing to do was smuggle more drugs across borders and get high before his UFC fight.
“I took LSD before the fight, a bunch of LSD,” Bilder recalled on the Rise Above with Kevin Lanning podcast. “I snuck it over the Canadian border, and then I took some the day of, right before I left to go to the show. We meet with [UFC] staff and I have these blacked out Dior glasses and nobody can see my eyes, you know?”
“When I took it, I go and I always pray. I put it on my tongue and it just dissolves. And I was like, oh no! No. No. No. I didn’t want all that. I was only supposed to do a micro. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ And I was like, ‘Alright. No. It’s alright. God, we got this.’”
“I know God is always with me, but it just felt like I wasn’t with God. And it just felt like empty.”
To make things worse for Bilder, he was immediately drug tested.
“As soon as you get to the venue, ‘You’ve been randomly selected to be drug tested, so we’re gonna have you pee immediately when you get to the venue.’” Bilder continued. “I was like, ‘Cool.’ I just felt like everybody was giving me the eye.”
“And then I lost and everybody was talking s–t on the internet,” he said. “‘F–king dumbass! Clown!’ Laughing about my little brother’s suicide. Like, bro, like like the most brutal shit you could ever experience, bro. It was crazy the way people talk to me. This is when I get sober. So my last use was that UFC fight.”
Bilder would return several months later at a UFC Apex card, getting blanked on the scorecards 30-27×3 by Jeong Yeong Lee. The UFC would go on to release him from the promotion in October 2024, but at least Bilder hasn’t released his hold on sobriety since then.
