If you thought the feud between JacksonWink coach Mike Winkeljohn and former JacksonWink member Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone was going to end after Cerrone submitted Winkeljohn student Mike Perry in Denver, you’d be wrong. Leading up to the contest, Cerrone called his former gym a ‘puppy mill’ and went so far as to provide a straightforward “F**k Winkeljohn” quote for the media. He didn’t hesitate to rub the win in a bit after, either.
“My grandma went and told Winkeljohn ‘You should have bet on the dinosaur,’” he said during a post-fight media scrum. “He knows what he did. It’s all over money, too. That’s the worst part. Looks like he’s still not getting paid, is he?”
So now we have Mike Winkeljohn making his own statement on Instagram calling Cerrone a ‘cancer.’
”Where was ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone the last 10 years helping others at the gym?” Winkeljohn said in a video. “Nowhere to be found. He didn’t come to our classes, didn’t even use Greg Jackson his last two fight camps. When he came, he would grab sparring partners and then he would take those sparring partners back up to his ranch where he paid for fun, free s**t. Those guys would sometimes go up there and stay and train, and they’d lose.”
”Any gym owner would tell you cancer has to be removed,” he continued. “It’s removed. The gym has no drama. It’s a happy place. I’m a happy guy. With that being said, I really wish Mike Perry had not taken ‘Cowboy’ down. Anyway, if you have fighter experience, and you want to come train with the best fighters in the world and help each other – Jon Jones, Holly Holm, Michelle Waterson, Devin Clark, Bevon Lewis, Carlos Condit, Siyar [Bahadurzada], John Dodson and so many others – you’re more than welcome. If you’re one of those guys that swings on Donald Cerrone’s you-know-what, that’s weak and weird.”
Is it really drama free, though? We just saw incidents during UFC Denver fight week where Perry called out JacksonWink teammate Ray Borg because he “talked s**t about Frank the Tank,” aka striking coach Frank Lester. Leading up to the event, headliner Yair Rodriguez admitted he left JacksonWink because “I don’t like drama.” He’s actually one of those guys who left for Cerrone’s ranch to enjoy fun free s**t, and was fortunate enough not to lose. That’s a lot of drama leaking from one camp for a single event.
And it’s probably not close to being over. With so many fighters milling about Albuquerque, this has the potential to drag on and drag in many more fighters on both sides of the JacksonWink divide.