The wrestling news site that shall not be named is reporting that Sin Cara's suspension for a Talent Wellness Program violation is over a drug test failure that WWE learned of weeks ago. According to the site's lead reporter, he learned on June 20th that Sin Cara had failed a drug test for steroids. Since he was unable to find a corroborating source at the time, he emailed WWE Spokesperson Robert Zimmerman, who replied a day later. Zimmerman said that if there was a violation, it would be made public as per the rules of the policy.

Since WWE learned of the failure at least 25 days ago, it appears that they are playing games with the policy and suspensions again. From the text of the policy:

First Violation: In the event of an initial positive test for substances prohibited by this Policy other than marijuana and alcohol, the WWE Talent shall be suspended for thirty (30) days, fined an amount equal to thirty (30) days' pay deducted from the WWE Talent's downside guarantee on a weekly basis and WWE will publicly disclose the WWE Talent's name and duration of the suspension and indicating a first violation the Policy.

Early on, the policy had been amended to allow the wrestlers to work on TV and PPV without pay, but that was revised after the program received increased scrutiny in the aftermath of the Benoit murder-suicide and subsequent Congressional inquiries. Under one version of the amended policy, the wrestlers were docked their downside guarantee salary and bonuses, but they did have their road expenses covered, something WWE doesn't do for wrestlers not under suspension. It remains to be seen if Sin Cara was being paid for the work he did after failing the test and if he will get his bonus for the Money In The Bank PPV, especially since as I already said, the aforementioned version of the policy was abolished years ago.

Also, for what it's worth, when WWE tried to appear to "crack down" on steroids in Fall 2007 after the Benoit fallout and suspension of about a dozen wrestlers who were outed as customers of a shady internet pharmacy, there was another delayed suspension. WWE had announced that starting on November 1st, they would announce all suspensions on their website. On November 2, 2007, Chris Masters was suspended for the second time while D.H. Smith, who was in the middle of a big push, got his first suspension. The timing was clearly suspect, and rightfully so, because Smith had actually failed a steroid test in September. WWE waited until the new rule went into effect to suspend a wrestler "who they had plans for" over a drug test he had failed over a month earlier. When Smith came back, there was no more push. He was just a pawn.

At any rate, something is amiss. I also find it somewhat interesting that the first drug test failure (well, that was made public but theoretically they're all supposed to be made public) that I can remember since Rey Mysterio was popped for painkillers without a proper prescription on August 27, 2009. This case also seemed odd, because he was in the middle of heated negotiations with WWE at the time and failures for painkillers were rare: None of the wrestlers who were sent to rehab or fired for painkiller issues had ever failed a test for painkillers. Anyway, not only does it seem like way too long without any drug test failures (especially with Matt Hardy's issues last year) but, I also find it curious that the first failure since Rey almost two years ago is the wrestler being groomed to replace him.