When Jose Canseco implicated several Major League Baseball stars in his 2005 steroids masterpiece, "Juiced," I respected his audacity.

But when history's first 40-40 man decided to enter his name in a legitimate Mixed Martial Arts tournament last month, I was put off by his stupidity.

Canseco is an MMA nobody. He apparently has trained in Muay Thai for years, when he wasn't busy using his rear as a pincushion for PED experimentation. Or when he wasn't mashing tainted home runs, turning down Madonna's sexual overtures or writing hilarious, egomaniacal tell-all books as revenge for being "blackballed" from MLB.

Now, in search of more quick bucks and out of reality TV offers, he is signed up to fight the 7-foot-2 Hong Man Choi in Dream 9's Super Hulk Tournament on May 26 in Yokohama, Japan.

The novice Canseco has nothing in common with Choi - who, despite his enormous frame, possesses formidable fighting skills (Fedor Emelianenko and Mirko Cro Cop might attest) and can honestly say that his abnormal size has nothing to do with pharmaceutical magic (he has Pituitary Gigantism).

Meanwhile, Canseco is a 44-year-old, cash-strapped ex-ballplayer who still sports inflated muscles yet couldn't defeat fair-haired nut-job Danny Bonaduce in a three-round celebrity boxing match.

In other words, if Canseco doesn't back out, he's screwed.

It's a shame, really. Not Canseco's decline; rather, the belief by former athletes that MMA is a place for them to maintain relevance. (Hear that, Roy Jones Jr.?)

While Dream would never deny propagating wacky spectacles like Super Hulk to sell tickets, there's no way Canseco belongs on the same card as MMA studs like Kid Yamamoto, Sokoudjou.html">Sokoudjou.html'>Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou.html">Sokoudjou.html">Sokoudjou.html">Sokoudjou, Gegard Mousasi or Jayson "Mayhem" Miller, to name a handful.

Too bad Dream caters to a Japanese audience that's more interested in freakshows than the larger faction of fans that wishes for MMA's broadened growth as a sport.

The latter category is where I fall, so I don't give two shrunken testicles about watching Canseco get his head battered by a real fighter.

Or even a real athlete, for that matter. The Minnesota Vikings' Jared Allen or the Phoenix Suns' Shaquille O'Neal would likely have no trouble destroying Canseco in an MMA bout. Those two bona fide sports stars have at least trained in the sport, if only for a small time as a change-up workout.

Therefore, assuming Choi is healthy, the 352-pound "Techno Goliath" figures to make an ugly mess of Canseco. It'll be a joke.

But, if Dream is really serious about playing up this episode, the promotion should get totally outlandish. For example, it should replace the traditional pre-fight "weigh-in" with a one-time-only "blood-out" - in which a doctor draws plasma from Canseco's arm and tests it, in front of the crowd, to see how many dozens of banned substances are pumping through his veins. Beforehand, fans could guess which ones might turn up positive, and prizes could be awarded for the most correct drugs.

Canseco would be announced as "The Bogus Basher" and walk to the stage wearing a thick chain with a hypodermic needle as a pendant.

Because, if Canseco's going to participate in a true MMA bout, let's at least strip away any hint of authenticity.

Hopefully, Japan is the only place Canseco is permitted to fight, since steroid-testing there is perhaps less stringent than in the United States. Although hard-core fans of the sport will see this for the...