Kevin Randleman was special. Whether knocking kickboxing legend Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic silly with a single punch or defying physics by launching the great Fedor Emelianenko airborne with one of the most incredible throws in MMA history, Randlem…
Kevin Randleman was special. Whether knocking kickboxing legend Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic silly with a single punch or defying physics by launching the great Fedor Emelianenko airborne with one of the most incredible throws in MMA history, Randleman was potential personified.
A former UFC heavyweight champion, despite competing as a college wrestler at just 177 pounds, Randleman’s energy and intensity could light up even the darkest room and chase away even the most persistent demons.
When he passed away last week at the age of 44, the community lost a memorable athlete. Melvin Guillard, who fights Derek Campos Friday on Spike TV, lost something more than that—he lost a mentor and a friend.
Guillard sat down with Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden to discuss the life and legacy of his idol and how he intends to fight on in Randleman’s memory.
Bleacher Report: It’s been a hard few days hasn’t it?
Melvin Guillard: He was everything to me. One of the greatest guys in the world, bro. He would give you the shirt off his back. He was one of the most positive, influential people in my life. When I was going down the wrong roads, he was one of those people who pulled me back in. He was my mentor, my friend.
He was the reason I put gloves on, man. He was the guy I came up admiring and wanting to be like. Even to the point I started dyeing my hair like he did. I’m going to miss him, bro. I haven’t stopped crying since it happened. He was more than a friend; he was a big brother to me.
B/R: What did he see in you to take you under his wing the way he did?
MG: He knew I was going to put it down. I started out as a wrestler. I wasn’t a striker yet. I came up as a wrestler, state champion in high school. And I admired him then.
B/R: It seems like a lot of people did.
MG: I was talking with my coach Din Thomas about this at practice. Now, all of a sudden everyone is saying “I miss Kevin Randleman.”
But where were all these people at when he was around? He was a world champion, and nobody asked about him. Including Dana White. And he lived right there in Vegas.
Now that he’s gone, everybody feels sorry. But before, they’d walk right by him in the gym or walk right by him at a show and not even acknowledge him.
B/R: Tell me about the first time you met him. Is it true you asked his blessing to use his hairstyle in the UFC?
MG: Now that he’s gone, I can’t help thinking back on the first time I met him. I was like a kid who just saw Santa Claus for the first time. I was so lost for words, I couldn’t even get my words out.
The crazy thing is, he was actually working Joe Stevenson’s corner against me. It just got me more excited about the fight. That was when I asked him, “Bro, I look up to you, is it cool if I dye my hair like you?”
He said, “Yeah, no problem. I would love to see you do that and keep the Monster tradition alive. You remind me a lot of me when I fight.” Well, that’s what I was going for.
B/R: A lot of people remember Kevin leaping into the air like a gazelle or throwing Fedor on his head. Is there a Randleman memory that stands out for you?
MG: His fight moments, I love all of them. Even when he fought Bas Rutten. I collected them on VHS. All of his fights, he reminded me of myself. I wanted to be the next Kevin Randleman. If I could have been any fighter in the game, it was him.
When he came to fight, he came to fight. Even in the fights he lost, people talked about him like “he was kicking that guy’s ass.” And if you really look at my career, my career is the same way. There were fights I was winning that I ended up losing. We had a lot of similarities, a lot we shared.
B/R: How hard is it for you to see this fight week through? Will you be carrying this in your heart on Friday?
MG: If his wife and kids need anything, I will always be there for them. His legacy, in the cage, is going to live on through me. I’m going to make sure of that. That presence in the ring, the way he did it, it kind of got away from me for a while.
Now I’m back, I’m fresh, and every time I step into that ring, it’s going to be a tribute to him. He told me one day I would be a world champion. He saw it in me. Now, I need to win that Bellator world championship for him.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
“We’re just going to take it one game at a time.”
If you’ve watched sports, any sport, you’ve heard that tired cliche thousands of times. It’s the next game, the next fight, the next race that consumes an athlete in …
“We’re just going to take it one game at a time.”
If you’ve watched sports, any sport, you’ve heard that tired cliche thousands of times. It’s the next game, the next fight, the next race that consumes an athlete in the moment. Anything less than total concentration is akin to courting disaster.
In fighting, that maxim is especially true. Failing to focus on the opponent right in front of you can lead to extreme embarrassment or, worse, irreparable harm.
Ask Mike Tyson.
Ask Georges St-Pierre.
The margin for error in fighting is so small, each opponent deserves a fighter’s ultimate respect. Looking ahead is a fool’s game.
In the case of Conor McGregor, however, it’s awfully hard not to throw caution to the wind.
Sure, the UFC’s featherweight champion is moving to lightweight in order to challenge that division’s best. But what is he doing after that? McGregor is so compelling, both in and out of the cage, that it’s nearly impossible not to fantasy-book his career fight after glorious fight.
Assuming McGregor beats Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 196, will the limits we’ve established for every other fighter apply to him? Talk is flying around the sport that McGregor already has 170-pound champion Robbie Lawler in his sights.
If he can move up 10 pounds in order to claim a second UFC title, why stop there? Could welterweight be next? Or is McGregor potentially biting off more than he can chew?
Lead writers Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter, Bleacher Report’s version of Kirk and Spock, discuss.
Jeremy Botter: When I was first told about this idea of McGregor, provided he beats Rafael dos Anjos in a few weeks, moving up to 170 pounds to challenge Robbie Lawler at UFC 200, I laughed. And I guess, if you really think about it, that’s the logical reaction to such a thing, because it is at once silly and absurd. It is ludicrous.
But then I started thinking about it, this time doing my level best to avoid laughing. And I came to a point where I realized: If this dude is able to beat the RDA monster and capture the lightweight belt, and he wants to go after another belt? It’s like…why not?
(Video contains profanity.)
We’ve seen McGregor say a lot of things that seemed crazy-dumb before, and then he goes out and does the thing he predicted like some kind of Gaelic soothsayer. If he becomes lightweight champion and believes he can turn around and win a third UFC title, well, I say go for it. I don’t know how successful he’ll be, but it’s actually a better matchup than it would seem on the surface.
Jonathan Snowden: The MMA community seems to consider things impossible simply because they’ve never been done before. But there is plenty of precedent in the broader world of combat sports for exactly this kind of leap.
Take, for example, Roy Jones Jr. Before he was challenging fans off the street, Jones was considered the very best boxer in the world. He beat the great Bernard Hopkins for the middleweight championship of the world and, nearly 10 years later, beat John Ruiz for the heavyweight title at 193 pounds.
For those bad at math, that’s a 33-pound swing with championship gold on each end. And that’s hardly extraordinary. It’s fairly routine for boxers to jump several weight classes during the course of their careers.
While MMA is not boxing, it remains to be seen whether or not fighters can follow a similar career arc. B.J. Penn might have done it if there had been a 145-pound weight class in any of the major promotions in his prime. Who’s to say McGregor won’t show similar skill?
Is it crazy to consider McGregor as a singular, first-of-his-kind fighter? Maybe. But beating Dos Anjos automatically propels him into a class that includes just two fighters—Penn and Randy Couture.
When those are your peers, suddenly almost anything seems possible, doesn’t it?
Jeremy: When I actually stopped to think about how McGregor the fighter matches up with Lawler the fighter, it’s actually more favorable than it initially appears. Lawler has historically been a dude who starts off slowly and really only gets his engine firing in the final two rounds of a fight, when his back is against the wall and he has to turn things up a few notches to win.
That’s a problem against McGregor, a pressure fighter from the outset. Sure, he’ll be giving up some size to Lawler. But I’ve spent plenty of time around both men, and I can tell you that it’s not that dramatic a difference. McGregor is actually a large lightweight and was a massive featherweight. When he bulks up (which he’s currently in the process of doing, eating all the steaks Ireland can produce), he’s physically bigger than former champion Johny Hendricks.
And so the more you think about all of this, the less crazy it seems. Yeah, this dude is crazy for going from division to division to division, looking to fight the absolute best each has to offer. But isn’t that what this whole sport is all about? Does this thing McGregor is doing feel so weird just because it’s so rare, because we are so used to seeing dudes like Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva who would rather dominate where they are more comfortable than challenge themselves?
Jonathan: It’s actually a very interesting battle of styles. Lawler is one of the best pocket boxers in MMA history. In phone-booth range he’s a devastating puncher and has the chin to win almost any battle of wills.
It’s at distance, however, that McGregor could make his mark. Few fighters in MMA have cleaner, more precise punches from range. He rarely over commits and mixes in just enough esoteric stuff to keep opponents guessing.
It’s those instants, when opponents are still busy processing the swirling data and McGregor is already in motion, that have made him the most feared striker in years.
Lawler is there to be hit. Every opponent gets a chance to land his best shots, testing the champion’s outrageous fortitude and now-legendary iron chin. It’s why every fight seems to come down to the wire.
The question, then, becomes whether McGregor’s power migrates with him and he eats his way to welterweight. As fighters move up in weight, their punching prowess tends to decline in equal measure. It’s the difference between a Floyd Mayweather who finishes opponents at lightweight and a Floyd Mayweather who grinds out excruciating decisions at 154 pounds.
McGregor, however, is no Mayweather. He’s a legitimate knockout artist. If anyone proves to be the exception, it will be him. Is it likely he’ll pack the same punch at 170 pounds? Not at all. But it exists in the realm of possibility. And with possibility comes hope.
Right now it’s easy to dismiss the idea as the lunatic ravings of a fighter who hasn’t tasted a draft of humility in quite some time. But, should he beat Dos Anjos, this madcap matchup is going to happen—and you’d have to be a very brave individual indeed to bet against Conor McGregor.
Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter cover combat sports for Bleacher Report.
There’s a moment in a fighter’s life when he knows he’s got it. When, after being knocked down hundreds, even thousands of times, suddenly he’s the wrecking ball and not the crumbling building. When he bests someone in the gym he once looked up at with…
There’s a moment in a fighter’s life when he knows he’s got it. When, after being knocked down hundreds, even thousands of times, suddenly he’s the wrecking ball and not the crumbling building. When he bests someone in the gym he once looked up at with stars in his eyes.
It’s just not usually a 17-year-old girl.
Of course, Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson’s nemesis was no ordinary teenage girl. When others were playing tennis, his sister, Lindsay, was at the dojo. When other kids whiled away the time with video games and nonsense, she was at the dojo. When friends were at the mall? You guessed it. She was at the dojo.
In the Thompson family, martial arts was not just an activity that put food on the table. Ray Thompson’s Upstate Karate was also a sanctuary and, at times, almost a prison. Training was compulsory, and it was hard.
“I knew all the benefits I had derived from martial arts instruction and training, and I wanted my kids to experience that as well,” Ray Thompson said. “We put the same emphasis on the martial arts that we did on school. It was not an option.”
Ray had begun his martial arts journey at 18, inspired by Elvis Presley of all people.
“I thought Elvis was really cool,” Ray said. “A good singer. A good dancer. A handsome fella who wooed the ladies. And he did those cool karate moves.
“Well, I knew I couldn’t sing, and I knew I couldn’t dance. And I didn’t have those Elvis Presley looks. But I thought, maybe, I could do some of that karate stuff he did.”
It may have have been a light-hearted beginning to his life’s work, but years fighting on the international circuit as the Master of Disaster soon convinced Ray that martial arts were a serious business. It was a lesson he passed on to his family and students.
When they were barely toddlers, each of Thompson’s five children started attending classes with their dad. Only when they were 16, he figured, were they old enough to decide whether or not they wanted to continue.
“I remember being three years old, my dad would be dust-mopping the mat, and I’d be piggy back,” Lindsay said. “We just grew up in it. There are football families, baseball families, basketball families. We’re a karate family. We’re a martial arts family. That’s what we did. If we even hinted at wanting to do something else, it was like ‘Nope.’ This is it. This is what you’re focusing on, and you’re going to be great at it.”
Lessons didn’t end at the dojo doors. When brother and sister squabbled, a pretty typical sound in most families, their father moved the coffee table out of the way and had them settle their beef in the middle of the living room. No closed fists were allowed, to prevent cuts. Anything else was fair game.
“My dad said ‘you guys want to fight? Alright. You gonna fight,'” Lindsay said. “And he was like ‘Go. You stop and you’ll get it from me.’ We’d be beating the s–t out of each other. Excuse my French. Until we were crying and we didn’t want to hit each other anymore. Only martial arts families can get away with stuff like that. Today my parents would be in jail. We didn’t fight anymore after that. At least not around dad.”
The result of all that tough love and martial discipline, in Lindsay’s case, was a young fighter with exceptional power and skill. And a young lady in desperate need of a sparring partner.
“I had stuck with it for 10 years. Most people quit,” Lindsay said. “They don’t stick with it long enough to get good at it. But my brothers had to be there, so my dad was constantly saying, ‘Stephen, get in there.’ He was the closest thing there was to a training partner that could push me.”
Stephen (11-1, 6 KO), who fights Johny Hendricks Saturday on Fox Sports 1 in a bout that might well determine the next UFC welterweight contender, isn’t too proud to relay the results of those sparring matches.
“She kicked my butt,” he said with a laugh, something his father confirmed.
“She was a couple of years older than Stephen, and she was a pretty stout young lady,” Ray said. “She was the first of my kids to fight in an authentic kickboxing match. I put her up against a female national champion. And my daughter ended up winning that match.
“Stephen really looked up to his sister. For a number of years, she was larger and definitely stronger than Stephen. So Stephen took some abuse for a while. She was a tough young lady and a good fighter. It had a hardening effect on him. You hammer that nail long enough, and it gets hard. When he was around 14 or 15 years old, Stephen started coming into his own. And he came to a realization that he could do this.”
“The ass-kickings stopped,” Lindsay said. “I remember vividly, and it happened overnight, a switch flipped in him. He just got it. Something happened, and it clicked with him. He was a beast, and I remember leaving training crying because he was kicking my ass now. And then I was like ‘hey, let’s hang out. We can be friends. I’m the nice sister.'”
For Stephen, it was as if he’d seen the future. Beating his sister gave him the confidence to continue on his own path and to attempt to follow in her footsteps and actually compete in the ring. No giant gloves and padded helmets. An honest-to-goodness fight.
“I was training with her and doing fairly well, after years of getting my butt kicked. I thought ‘why not step out there and fight?’ You were supposed to be 16, but it was three days before my birthday,” Stephen said. “My dad threw me to the dogs. He set me up with a guy who was undefeated and 26 years old. But I ended up beating the crap out of him.
“I did it with ease and felt great out there. My dad knew my potential. I didn’t see it until afterwards. After that fight, I realized ‘I can do this.’ That’s what he wanted to show me. He put me out there with one of the best in my first fight. He was trying to show me I could do a whole lot better than I thought was possible. And that’s when I got my nickname.”
Ray picks up the story from there, one that has become part of family lore.
“After the fight, his opponent was being interviewed in the ring and said ‘I wonder why I got in the ring with that boy.’ And the announcer called Stephen ‘the Wonder Boy.'”
Thompson’s kickboxing exploits read like a work of fiction. He won titles everywhere he competed, from South Carolina to Szeged, Hungary. Only a devastating knee injury suffered against current Glory Kickboxing star Raymond Daniels slowed him down.
“When I tore the ligaments in my knee, doctors told me I’d never fight again,” Thompson said. “They said I’d never be the same. When I heard that, it about broke me. Because this is my dream. It’s what I love to do. I was still young, and I remember riding home with my dad and him saying ‘discard what that doctor said to you. You can keep fighting. I’m going to help you get there.’
“The next day I was at the gym, sitting in a chair with my leg propped up and hitting a bag. The next day. I wasn’t going to let it get me down. I kept going. And I’ve had three surgeries since, one actually right after my fight with Jake Ellenberger. But my knee feels great. It’s a mental thing. After suffering one of these injuries, you can do more than you think. If you’re strong mentally, you can do anything.”
As great as he was in the kickboxing ring, his future was always in the UFC. His father had taken him to see UFC 3 in Charlotte when he was 12 years old. The Octagon, from that moment, was perhaps an inevitability.
Although known for their stand-up prowess, there was nothing myopic about the Thompson’s approach to the martial arts. They studied a number of disciplines and former jiu-jitsu legend Carlos Machado, who married Lindsay in 2001, began doing seminars at Upstate Karate years before it was trendy in karate circles to rediscover their sport’s grappling elements.
“My dad had us cross-training at a very young age,” Lindsay said. “Stephen was like nine when he was first introduced to Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We’re very lucky that my dad was one of those ‘karate guys’ who was very open-minded and saw the value in cross-training.
“It’s not like one way is the only way. Not in our family. Everything complements. Its doesn’t contradict. When you look at it like that you can learn for life. You’ll never get bored.”
To prepare for a career in the Octagon, Thompson sought out the best in the world. A longtime sparring partner of former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, Stephen now trains regularly with middleweight standout Chris Weidman, whose younger sister is engaged to Thompson’s brother, Tony.
Combined with his father’s expertise in the stand-up game and the time-tested efficiency of Machado jiu-jitsu, Thompson has all the tools to challenge for UFC gold. And that, more than money, was always the plan.
“We started in the fight game not necessarily to make a living at it. We did it for the glory,” Ray said. “He wanted to get out there and test his skills and make a name, maybe even go down in the history books. Those are the reasons that will make a fighter train hard and go beyond where they’d take it if it was just a job. The fact he makes a living doing it? That’s just icing on the cake.”
“Here I am,” Thompson said. “Fighting the No. 2 guy in the division and maybe after that, fighting for a title. I’m on that path. And it’s so surreal, man. It really is. I’m going to give it my all to get that title. And whether I make it or not, I’ll know I’ve competed with the best. And that’s enough for me.”
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
Before Wednesday’s press conference promoting his March fight with UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos, I was done with Conor McGregor. Done.
Not as a fighter, of course. As an athlete he’s never been more enthralling. His unique rhythm and unque…
Before Wednesday’s press conference promoting his March fight with UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos, I was done with ConorMcGregor. Done.
Not as a fighter, of course. As an athlete he’s never been more enthralling. His unique rhythm and unquestionable striking power have brought an energy and excitement the featherweight class has never seen before.
After years of living as second-class citizens, of headlining those pay-per-views people would decide weren’t even worth the trip to Buffalo Wild Wings, the little guys were finally get their chance to shine.
That was all McGregor’s doing. It’s funny how an opponent collapsing unconscious tends to cure fans of their size issues. Whether a man is 145 pounds or 245 pounds, face down on the mat is face down on the mat.
While McGregor continued to add wrinkles and nuances to his fight performances, I feared he had peaked as a “personality.” Even the most electric self-promoters can fall into patterns and routines. So, it seemed, would McGregor.
At a certain point I wanted to shake him back to his senses. We get it. You make a lot of money. We get it. These other guys don’t. We get it. You’re Irish.
Is that all there is?
It seemed a pertinent question a few months ago. After all, fight fans had seen the original McGregor, ChaelSonnen, eventually run head first into a creative brick wall. Sonnen‘s act was revolutionary, and McGregor borrowed heavily from it.
But when he wasn’t calling Anderson Silva and his countrymen “savages,” Sonnen seemed lost, eventually settling on a pompous pro wrestling caricature who walked the line between parody and serious promotion before ultimately falling completely into the comedy zone.
Maybe it was because he went through the promotional cycle with former champion Jose Aldo twice in a single year, but McGregor, too, seemed to fall into a rut. On Wednesday, he pulled himself out of it, proving that his pattern was just as flexible as his fight game.
For almost an hour it was the ConorMcGregor show. He took shots at his opponent, the UFC’s lackluster marketing wing and threatened to bury boxer Floyd Mayweather in the desert. At one point he even began answering the questions directed at Dos Anjos and UFC president Dana White.
Only Jesus Christ himself was spared of McGregor‘s fearsome wrath. When Dos Anjos called himself a tool in Jesus’ hands, McGregor claimed a closer relationship with the Son of God.
“Me and Jesus are cool,” he said so casually that you might miss the sacrilege. “I’m cool with all the gods. Gods recognize gods.”
It was a one-of-a-kind performance—and he did it all dressed as a B-villain from the 1980s police procedural Miami Vice, citing a recently arrested Mexican drug lord as his sartorial role model.
“I’m speaking Spanish, I’m dressed like ‘El Chapo’ in his prime,” McGregor said. “I’m running this company like half a wise guy and I’m up here verbally destroying this man. I am a multicultured individual. I really can do whatever I want.”
Truly, there is only one ConorMcGregor.
It would have been easy to recycle his greatest hits from the Aldo campaign. Dos Anjos is a similar fighter with a similar background. He could have fallen back on all his classic hits about favelas or conquering warlords and spent the remainder of his day buying another luxury car.
Instead, McGregor tailored his talk just for Dos Anjos. Like any good fighter, he searched out weakness, eventually finding it in Dos Anjos‘ relationship with his children and his home country, calling the champion a “gringo” and lighting an obvious fire in a man not well-suited for this kind of verbal warfare.
“I want to send you to our Brazilian TV partner and have you answer why you have to book a hotel in your own home country,” McGregor said. “I want you to answer why your kids’ names are Bob and Donald. Why are you raising American children?”
Are Dos Anjos‘ kids really named Bob and Donald? Of course not. But the point stands—Dos Anjos has departed his home for a new life in California at Kings MMA. It was clearly a sensitive subject for the Brazilian, who was livid as the two faced off for the first time.
As McGregor offered a hand, looking to recreate El Chapo‘s famous photo with actor Sean Penn, Dos Anjos could only seethe. McGregor had him right where he wanted him. And the UFC suddenly had itself a bona fide superfight.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
It’s hard to imagine a UFC without Conor McGregor. In just three short years, the Irishman has rewritten all the rules, backing up his never-ending trash talk with performances we won’t soon forget.
Along the way, he’s become one of the most potent dra…
It’s hard to imagine a UFC without ConorMcGregor. In just three short years, the Irishman has rewritten all the rules, backing up his never-ending trash talk with performances we won’t soon forget.
Along the way, he’s become one of the most potent drawing cards in the sport’s entire history.
McGregor knocked out the best featherweight of all time in just 13 seconds last December. But dispatching Jose Aldo was hardly a singular moment for the new champion. Months earlier, he took on potent American wrestler Chad Mendes on short notice and a bum knee. Maybe that’s why it took him two whole rounds to finish the fight?
Despite McGregor‘s unprecedented success—or maybe because of it—doubters continue to lurk.
When Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botterbroke the news that McGregor would venture up to the lightweight class to challenge champion Rafael dos Anjos, some even suggested he did so in order to avoid featherweight challenger Frankie Edgar.
For some, facing down Mendes without proper time to prepare wasn’t enough. Neither was becoming the first man to beat Aldo in more than a decade. Some still question McGregor‘s fortitude.
Is that fair? And is McGregor ducking Edgar, himself a former lightweight champion? Bleacher Report Lead Writers Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter discuss the man some love to hate.
Jonathan Snowden: At every stop along the way, McGregor faced doubters. Each opponent, from young gun Max Holloway to Russian slugger Dennis Siver, was supposed to be the one to finally bring him down to earth.
But so far, he’s still flying high.
In the beginning, it was fair to question McGregor. MMA is a complicated game, and the competition comes in all shapes and sizes. Over the years, we’ve seen a number of flashy strikers come and go, the scourge of American wrestling turning contenders into pretenders in a blink.
But the Mendes fight should have silenced those doubts. He survived the worst from the best wrestler in the division. Yes, wrestling may always pose problems for McGregor. You know who else it poses problems for, Jeremy? Everyone.
It’s easy to tell people what you intend to do. Backing it up is harder. That’s the tricky part that derailed MMA’s last big-mouthed charmer ChaelSonnen. Sonnen had the patter down but couldn’t deliver in the cage. McGregor writes checks with his mouth, then cashes them with a smile.
There is only one ConorMcGregor. I’m not sure our hearts could handle another.
Jeremy Botter: The thing I’ve come to realize about McGregor is that, no matter what he does, people are going to come up with new and creative ways to hate him. That’s partially because of his mouth, sure, but it’s also because MMA fans—and I guess sports fans in general—love to hate on anything that is successful.
Whether it’s the “American wrestler” question or the “Brazilian champion” question or the “beastly lightweight champion” question, there is always going to be something.
If McGregor knocks out Dos Anjos—and I think he’ll do just that, in fact—there will be some other made-up reason to hate him coming down the pipe.
That’s where this Edgar stuff comes from, and anyone in their right mind can see how silly it is. Yes, Edgar deserves a title shot. He is long past due for one.
But anyone who says McGregor is running away from Edgar toward an easier fight is either deluded, dumb or outright lying in an attempt to get attention. The notion that a fighter moving up a weight class to challenge himself against a dominant champion somehow means he’s running away from his previous division is mind-blowing to me.
I mean, this dude just knocked out Jose Aldo in 13 seconds! And, still, the doubters are out there making fools of themselves.
Besides, Edgar’s going to get his title shot, and it will happen at UFC 200 on one of the biggest landmark events in fighting history. He’s going to get a massive payday, bigger than any other check he’s received in his entire life. All he has to do is be a little patient.
Jonathan: None of this, of course, is meant to minimize Edgar’s skill or his accomplishments. There isn’t a single fighter in the world at 145 or 155 pounds who wouldn’t need to be at their very best to beat Edgar on a good night.
Frankie has fast hands, fluid striking and a deceptively good takedown game. In many ways, these are exactly the right tools to beat McGregor.
But you know who else had the tools to beat McGregor? Aldo. And Mendes. And Holloway.
At this level, everyone is tough. McGregor, whatever his reputation, is well beyond the point of fighting cupcakes. He’ll never again step into the Octagon against a fighter who isn’t among the best of the world.
Edgar absolutely deserves our respect. But there’s no way McGregor looks at him and sees an unstoppable force he must sidestep by any means necessary. If anything, he sees a guy built to win decisions. And point fighters don’t last long against Conor’s left hand.
Jeremy: Two days before the Aldo fight last month, I was told it would be McGregor’s last fight at featherweight. Win or lose, he was moving up.
He is a giant in that division, and the weight cut is extraordinarily difficult for him, particularly now with the IV ban in effect. All you need to confirm this is to take one look at him during weigh-ins, when he looks like a mix between the Crypt Keeper and Skeletor.
So the very fact that McGregor plans on defending his belt against Edgar, plans on returning to 145 one more time, should tell you all you need to know about his desire to compete. He doesn’t have to do it. He can go after the lightweight title and then perhaps even the welterweight title, fighting bigger and better opponents.
But, no. He wants to fight Edgar because he knows people are questioning whether he can win that fight or whether Edgar is too much for him.
That, more than anything, is the sign of a real fighter. He wants to take on challenges that are not even required of him. And Jonathan, it just boggles my mind that people can claim to be a fan of this sport and a fan of true fighters and not realize what is right in front of them.
Jonathan: A narrative spread far and wide last year, right after he was booked against Siver, that the UFC was “protecting” Conor. While that match was far from light work, Siver was ranked in the Top 10 at the time, it wasn’t a fight against an American wrestler.
UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby traditionally employ what they call a “wrestling test.” Before they put the full promotional muscle of the UFC behind a fighter, they make sure he can handle an amateur wrestler who will challenge his takedown defense and ability to survive on the bottom.
If a fighter can’t weather a top-control wrestler, he’s never going to have lasting success at the sport’s highest level.
When the UFC began pushing him as the promotion’s brightest new star, McGregorhadn’t yet met that challenge. People were right to be skeptical. There was a chance that he’d be demolished the first time he squared off against a fighter intent on ground-and-pounding him.
But now we’ve seen McGregor take Mendes’ best on the mat, get right up unruffled and unbowed, and put him down for good. We don’t need to rely on guesswork or rumors. He answered every question the best way a fighter can—in the cage with his fists.
Narratives need to change as the facts change.
I’ve never understood why people criticize an analyst or politician for flip-flopping as the years go by. Your opinion should change as facts shift on the ground. And in the case of ConorMcGregor, the new data absolutely destroys the myths we built about favoritism and a desire to duck the hardest competition.
ConorMcGregor is the rare athlete who is exactly what he claims to be. He believes he’s the toughest guy in the sport and is willing to test that boast against all comers—including Frankie Edgar.
Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter cover combat sports for Bleacher Report.
For those in the know, MMA was a beautiful spectacle, the ultimate expression of humanity’s mastery of the body, mind and spirit. Fighting can reach across culture, religion and race to unite us. But that doesn’t mean it’s self-explanatory.
At the pure…
For those in the know, MMA was a beautiful spectacle, the ultimate expression of humanity’s mastery of the body, mind and spirit. Fighting can reach across culture, religion and race to unite us. But that doesn’t mean it’s self-explanatory.
At the purest level, games are simple. Who can run or swim the fastest? Who is strongest? Who can throw this object the furthest? These Olympian struggles require little from the audience. We can simply sit back and marvel at the human body pushed to its limits.
As the games get more complicated, the role of the announcer becomes more and more important. The games still seem simple—but there is a lot going on to make them seem so.
In most sports, the color commentator role is filled by a former player, a stalwart of the gridiron or the jump-shooter extraordinaire. Think Troy Aikman or Steve Kerr. They’ve been there before, in the muck, and can relay the athlete’s experience to the audience living vicariously.
If there’s no athlete to fit the bill, the buck is passed to a former coach, an analytical mind capable of parsing the nuances of the fast-moving sport he has given his life to.
In MMA, those things didn’t exist. There was no former athlete to walk fans through positional hierarchy on the ground. Even today, the earliest pioneers such as Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie are still actively competing themselves.
Into that void came Joe Rogan. A stand-up comedian best known as the host of Fear Factor, Rogan was on the surface an odd choice for the assignment. But his infectious enthusiasm and obvious knowledge soon won fans over.
For 14 years, he’s been the voice of the Octagon, taking millions of new fans by the hand and guiding them through the Byzantine world of MMA. At the same time, he’s continued his life as a comedian, releasing a number of successful specials and hosting one of the world’s most popular podcasts.
Occasionally, however, those worlds collide, as witnessed last December when Rogan hosted his UFC boss Dana White on his show. An insensitive joke at the expense of Cris “Cyborg” Justino was widely condemned, most notably by my colleague Sydnie Jones.
Much has changed since Rogan’s early days with the UFC. What was once an underground spectacle held in small towns such as Dothan, Alabama, has become a corporate phenomenon, with Good Morning America replacing Full Contact Fighter as the news source of the day.
Does Rogan still fit in this new-era UFC? Or will he have to choose between two successful careers? He sat down with Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden to discuss what the future may hold.
Bleacher Report: It is Joe Rogan. How are you doing, man?
Joe Rogan: What’s up, buddy? How are you?
B/R: I’m doing fantastic. I hope you are too. I know we roughed you up a bit in an article recently, and I wanted to get your take on it.
The basic premise, as I read it, was that Joe Rogan needs to be more cognizant of the impact that his words might have once they leave his mind and his mouth. Do you think that’s fair?
Rogan: I think the premise is fair, sure. It’s always good to be cognizant of the words that come out of your mouth. Where I took exception—I think she was being very dishonest with a lot of what she was doing, by quote mining podcasts and Twitter and all those different things.
You can do that, and you could piece together some argument that I say a lot of stupid s–t, and I absolutely do. Over the course of X amount of years and 700-plus three-hour podcasts, and who knows how many f–king tweets and all kinds of other s–t.
I mean no doubt about it.
B/R: But you don’t think it’s representative of you in some meaningful way?
Rogan: We’re pretending that human interaction and human language doesn’t have any subtlety to it and that there’s no variables as to your intent when you’re saying things. You could say some really ridiculous s–t under the guise of humor, and I accept it because I know that what you’re trying to do is entertain. You’re not trying to make a statement of fact. You’re not filling out an affidavit, OK? You’re not putting your hand on a Bible and swearing these are my actual thoughts. You’re trying to entertain. And that is what a joke is.
The problem is when someone’s singing a song, it’s quite obvious that they’re singing a song. They’re trying to entertain. When someone says something, whether it’s in text, like in a tweet, or whether it’s in a conversation and you type it out as text, if you take out the context of what they’re trying to do, you could take a lot of the jokes that people say and make it seem way worse than what it actually is. And that’s what people love to do when they are recreationally outraged.
B/R: Right.
Rogan: In one I said about I view women that don’t like kids the way I view dogs that like to eat their own s–t. The context of that tweet, I was at a restaurant, and I was with my friend who was with his kids. And his kids are like really well-behaved.
This woman was just looking at his kids with disgust and she said to her friend at a level that I could hear, “I f–king hate kids.”
“I f–king hate kids.” And she’s like shaking her head back and forth. And I was like, ugh, that’s so disturbing to hear a woman say that about like a little human being. And I understand if you don’t have them that you would think that they’re annoying. I get it. I mean I was guilty of that when I was young. I thought kids were annoying. But it’s just—there’s something about it coming out of this woman’s mouth. It’s sexist. It’s sexist certainly to say, woman, a woman, but it was an honest reaction, and I just put it in a tweet because I was just like, ugh.
But then like feminist bloggers have blogged about it. It’s been like the subject of like whole articles that they wrote, a f–king tweet that I wrote on like three glasses of wine in Santa Barbara at some f–king restaurant. You know you can do that with me if you really want to, if you want to quote mine and find a bunch of s–t that I said that’s stupid.
B/R: Do you buy the idea that it’s bad for the sport somehow? Your comedy?
Rogan: You know, you could say that any other sport, that I would be fired. Probably good, probably true. But guess what, I wouldn’t work for any other sport.
There’s a lot of other examples of similar jobs where you wouldn’t be able to get away with what I really get away with. But I’m a cage-fighting commentator. And if you get offended by jokes—I have a hard time taking people seriously that want to try to pass off jokes as fact or a statement.
You know and I think that’s a lot of what these “social justice warriors,” people that are recreationally outraged. That’s what they do. Instead of going “eh, he was just f–king around, he’s telling a joke,” they go, “oh, I got one. ” And then they write it down, and they run with it. It’s bulls–t, because they know and you know that it’s a joke.
B/R: The way I see it is there’s a general disconnect between you and critics. They buy into this premise that comedy shouldn’t make fun of people.
I think like comedy is great when it shatters someone’s dignity absolutely. Most often in your humor, and in anyone’s comedy, the person telling the joke is the butt of the joke. And that’s OK.
But sometimes it’s somebody else, like a celebrity or an idea. And there seems to be a growing sentiment that, well, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t make fun of anybody?
Rogan: That’s absolutely foolish. I mean they’re fools.
I think that speaks to their intent when they’re critiquing. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to censor you. They’re trying to silence you and censor you, and they’re trying to do it with shame. That was the whole reason why she takes all these things over the course of several years and compiles them into one article.
You’re trying to shame someone into changing their behavior to suit what you think their behavior should be like. I saw one of the tweets that she wrote like saying that someone should never joke about someone’s appearance. Like, what? Says who? Says who?
B/R: Says Twitter.
Rogan: I think that these people that say these things, they are either not a fan of comedy or they’re not a fan of certain types of comedy. They think that somehow comedy should be without victims.
But comedy is comedy. If it is funny, it is funny. And you know there’s some things that you’re gonna find funny that I won’t, and there are certain things that my friends would say that would hurt my feelings, and I don’t find funny. I don’t have to. But I don’t want to censor them.
This is what you should joke about—all things that are funny. All things. Including things about yourself, which I do all the time.
I’m f–king brutal when I make fun of myself. I do it all the time. You know, and if I was a sensitive person and I wasn’t me, I would be offended at me. That’s stand-up comedy, you know? That’s human.
In a lot of ways, humor, although it’s uncomfortable for people, it exposes truths that people are trying to hide and close off. And sometimes those truths being exposed to you is healthy. It’s actually good for you, and it’s good for other people as well.
I think when you don’t make fun of something, when you put something off limits, that’s when it has all this power because it’s like the elephant in the room that everyone knows about and no one is discussing. And I think that actually gives things more power when you don’t talk about them openly.
B/R: I’m reading this book The Comediansby Kliph Nesteroff. It’s tracking comedy from the vaudeville era to podcasts today. And like he has this idea that there’s like a generational gap in comedy, so like people who grew up on Bob Newhart or Jay Leno maybe aren’t gonna appreciate Louis C.K. or Chris Rock.
Maybe there’s like a millennial generation who aren’t gonna appreciate the people who came before them? Are these just generational and cultural differences rearing their heads?
Rogan: I don’t think so. It’s not a cultural gap. It’s an ideology.
The people that are doing this, if you follow them, they’re the same people that take these cookie-cutter ideologies, like they have these predetermined patterns of thinking and behavior, and you’re not allowed to stray outside those lines. Fill in whatever is the most current political or social cause you’re supposed to get behind.
And there’s good things to that. I think a lot of what we’re seeing with this outrage that people have about the social climate and attitudes about certain topics, I think ultimately they’re good, even though they’re kind of detrimental to the art form of stand-up comedy.
I think they’re good because I think we live in a time where it’s easier to live than it’s ever been before. It’s an amazing time. We’re experiencing the lowest murder rate today than any time in the last 50 years and possibly ever in human history. Right now is the safest time to live ever. And because of that, people have more time to come up with s–t to complain about that doesn’t make any sense.
I think it’s also people are more aware of all sorts of horrible things that are going on in the world than they ever have been before. We’re more aware of the power of thoughts and of the way we perceive things in our culture than we ever have before.
That’s why, even though I disagree with it, you’re seeing this ban on words, even innocuous ones like bossy. I think the idea behind it is kind of bulls–t, but I think there is like a pull to do these things because people are genuinely thinking that the world is changing. And despite all the horrible s–t that you see in the news, that seems to be true.
B/R: So bringing it back around, I guess, when your worlds collide like they did with the Cyborg joke, do you think it demands a different approach? When your comedy is MMA-focused? You might have to commentate a Cris Cyborg fight one day. Do have a different professional obligation to play it straight?
Rogan: Ultimately, this was an area where my two professions collided and I went on impulse, and that impulse was to go for a laugh. I would chalk the whole thing up on my part to a combination of poor decision-making, alcohol and the environment that I was having the conversation in which is a podcast with two comedians going for the joke. It’s a situation where my two separate professions collided and I failed to navigate them correctly. I f–ked up, plain and simple.
I certainly think, especially in retrospect that I do have a different professional obligation when I’m making a joke about a fighter that I might have to commentate on. Obviously, in the moment, alcohol and all, I didn’t consider it, and I f–ked up… Being a stand-up comedian and a fight commentator at the same time is tricky business. Maybe too tricky.
B/R: Is it hard sometimes not to bring up things like drug suspensions and other negative things that rarely seem to make UFC broadcasts?
Rogan: One thing that you never hear me talk about during the broadcast is testosterone replacement therapy. I had to bite my f–king tongue when Vitor Belfort was fighting Chris Weidman because I think as a fan and as an analyst it is my job to point out issues with the sport, significant issues.
Like if someone had undergone a strength and conditioning routine and all the sudden they started putting on all this muscle and you started seeing them having better performances inside the Octagon, you’d say like, “Hey, Nate Diaz has really stepped up his strength and conditioning, and you can see the results physically in him and you can see the results.” That would be a pertinent issue, right?
B/R: Right.
Rogan: That would be something that we would all want to discuss when you’re talking about how a fighter would perform inside the Octagon. But when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs like testosterone or things like that, we were supposed to give it a cursory mention. And that’s it.
I think that is disingenuous, and I think it does a discredit to the overall analysis of the competition itself. And I…
B/R: Do you ever do any pushback? I assume you have the producer saying like, “Hey, you know, tread lightly.”
Rogan: No, no, no. They don’t do that. But the UFC has told me to not bring it up. That’s it.
They don’t want to touch it. They want to leave it alone, and they want to leave it up to USADA and Nevada State Athletic Commission, and they just want to talk about the fighter’s skill and how they perform inside the Octagon.
B/R: Is it hard for you to maintain the credibility I feel like you’ve built up by telling us the truth for 14 years. Is it hard for you to step back and not say what you want to say?
Rogan: Only in that regard. And that’s why I talk about it on the podcast all the time. And I’m not gonna stop doing that ever. I’m just not.
And if the UFC ever said, “Hey, you gotta stop drinking and talking shit about people doing testosterone,” I’d be like, well, this is where we part ways. I’m not going to.
If you want me, while I’m working for you, to not bring up one aspect of this, if that is your choice, I don’t have a problem with that. But if it gets more hairy than that, I’m out.
B/R: I know you’ve said that when your contract expires, you’re not sure you want to keep doing this with UFC. Is it the things like this that have kind of led you in that direction?
Rogan: Potentially. It’s potentially confusing to people, I think. But in all fairness, the UFC has never given me a hard time about it. They didn’t give me a hard time about the Cris Cyborg joke; they really don’t ever give me a hard time about anything.
Overall, they’re amazing to work for. It’s a real pleasure.
I really couldn’t ask for more understanding or open-minded employers in that regard, and being able to do what I do for the UFC really is a huge honor and a position that I deeply respect.
I don’t think that this could ever work out the way it does if I didn’t start with them in the beginning. I mean, if they just hired me last month and I cracked an unfortunate joke while drinking booze on a podcast with the president of the company about one of his female fighters having a d–k, I think I would be rightly fired.
B/R: It sounds like you’re legitimately thinking about calling it a day?
Rogan: I’m probably gonna think about this over the next few months, what I would be happiest doing. I would always be a fan of the UFC. I don’t think it necessarily makes me more of a fan to do commentary. You know, I mean I think I do it professionally, and it’s fun and I enjoy it, but I’d probably enjoy it just as much, if not more, if I was just watching.
B/R: The commentary gig is not so easy, is it?
Rogan: I’m juggling a million different things. I’m trying to be entertaining, I’m trying to accurately assess the movement of the fighters and see if I can find patterns to analyze their strategy, I’m trying to see what they’re doing wrong, I’m observing fatigue, observing flaws in their technique, I’m observing amazing technique and dominant performances, and I’m trying to put that into words to give it honor, to honor it, rather, with my commentary, to try to capture the moment in as entertaining and as concise a way as possible.
So there’s a lot of s–t going on while you’re doing commentary. And that’s one of the reasons why I try not to say who won a round because while you’re talking and you’re doing your best to do commentary, you’re not shutting up and just watching and writing things down. You’re also concentrating on being entertaining.
You know it’s a very exhausting thing. It seems like it wouldn’t be, but at the end of a hard night of fights, I’m spent. Six hours of commentary requires a lot of energy and focus.
B/R: Every other comedian in this role, I’m thinking specifically of Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football here, flamed out. Why do you think you’ve lasted?
Rogan: You know why it was dog shit? Because Dennis Miller tried to just—he tried to just shove jokes in. You know I’ll go 10 UFCs without even an attempt at saying something funny. You know I’m not just trying to be funny.
When I do the UFC, I mean all I’m trying to do is do that. I mean I’m not trying to be a comedian doing UFC commentary, but it’s also like when I’m a comedian outside of that and someone wants to interject the two of them, I think the only place where they really truly collide was like the Cris Cyborg joke or things like that. Like, that’s when they collide, when I’m making fun of someone in a mean or a f–ked-up way, that I will have to eventually do commentary on.
But if I do do commentary on them, I will do my very best to honor what they’re doing inside the Octagon… I think if it interfered with my performance in the actual commentary itself, that would be an issue.
I’m very diligent about that when it comes to doing my best. I mean, you can like my commentary or not like my commentary, but understand when I do it, I’m doing the very best job that I can.
B/R: It’s been a crazy 14 years, and it’s been cool to have you kind of like as our guide through the whole thing. But that’s a long time to do anything.
Rogan: Well, thank you, man. I would enjoy it, even if I quit. I’ve enjoyed it up until now.
It’s a long time to do anything. I haven’t even made any real decisions. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. But that’s where my head is at. And again, I don’t want to disrespect this sport in any way.
B/R: Yeah, I understand that. But I think it’s kind of cool that you have UFC Joe Rogan and you’ve got podcast Joe Rogan, and they’re doing different things. And it’s cool to have different facets of your life. You know so many people are so one-dimensional, you know?
Rogan: Well, I’m just really lucky that there’s a bunch of stuff that I like to do that I can actually do for a living. And that’s really what it boils down to. It’s just I got super lucky that the things that I enjoy, they’ve become occupations. You know?
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report. This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
Kevin Randleman was special. Whether knocking kickboxing legend Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic silly with a single punch or defying physics by launching the great Fedor Emelianenko airborne with one of the most incredible throws in MMA history, Randleman was potential personified.