Josh Koscheck is back! (Even though Josh Koscheck never went away)

Somehow, even with a five-fight losing streak and the proverbial writing showing up all over the wall, you knew Josh Koscheck wasn’t going to just put his shoes back on and walk away from fighting. Koscheck came into public consciousness sort of dressed as a troll (and still sporting his Edinboro singlet attitude-wise) during his stint on the original Ultimate Fighter.

And he’s still trolling at 37 years old. Perceptively, anyway.

Koscheck calls it business. He signed a contract with Bellator last week and then started seeing the full circle poetry of the moment. Koscheck began his career on Spike TV a decade ago, and now in the twilight he re-enters the space. He believes, against popular opinion, that there’s a lot more cagework left in him to do. And besides, there’s “P*ssy Boy Paul Daley” hovering around out there on the Bellator plains. That’s a piece of unfinished business that’s good enough to turn his pupils into dollar signs.

What am I talking about? Here. Let me get out of the way and have Koscheck himself tell you, in the only way he can — which is to say without a filter, and in the third person.

“These fighters today bitch and complain about money, and bitch and complain about the Reebok deal, but they don’t want to stick together and do anything,” he says. “It’s like, hey, fight your contract out and see what your market value is. That’s how all this came about.

“I just said, hey Bob [Cook], I’m interested in fighting again, let’s see what we can get. And Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin at Zinkin Entertainment contacted Scott [Coker] after our time was up and we started negotiating. Scott put an offer up on the table that we couldn’t refuse, and we posed it to the UFC and they couldn’t match it, and here Josh Koscheck is signed with Bellator, back on Spike TV again. Right where my career started. And if it wasn’t for Spike TV, there is no UFC. Everybody needs to remember that.”

Koscheck cackled back in the day when he soaked a drunk Chris Leben with a hose as he slept off his rounds on the front lawn. That was how it began. He also beat Leben on Episode Six, and then Chris Sanford officially in the Finale. After that he went 14-5 in the UFC before the recent skid, including two bouts against longtime champ Georges St-Pierre, one of them for the title. It was a hell of a run until a split-decision loss against Johny Hendricks in May 2012 sort of set the spiral in motion.

Since that time, Koscheck has been finished four times in a row — twice by knockout, twice by submission. In his last fight, against Erick Silva, he was choked out somewhat unceremoniously in the first round. That came just three weeks after Jake Ellenberger finished him with a north-south choke.

“I went down there [against Silva] and made a mistake and got caught,” he says. “That’s part of mixed martial arts. So, you know, it what it is. Everybody’s going to be all, ‘Kos should retire,’ I’ll hear it all.

“But let me be the judge and say when it’s time, and let me close people around me be the judge and say that I should retire. I have good people around me, and Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin believe in me. And now Scott Coker and Spike TV believe in me. Now Bellator believes in me. It’s just a snowball effect. I’ve got good people around me, and I’ll be the one to decide when I should retire.”

As far as Koscheck’s concerned, everything that stood before his signing with Bellator belongs to the ether. Including him retiring Matt Hughes at UFC 135, and him absolutely flattening Yoshiyuki Yoshida with right hands at that Fight for the Troops card back in 2008. He says all of it, the good and the bad…it’s all ground zero now.

“I think I’m at 0-0 again as a record,” he says. “I haven’t won and I haven’t lost yet. This is all new to me, as it was for you guys who were all shocked that I signed with Bellator. It’s all new to me as well. It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for me to start my career over at 37 years old, and just erase what happened 10 or 15 or however many fights I had in the UFC, and just start fresh. I haven’t been this excited since the Ultimate Fighter days.”

One memory that stubbornly remains is that of Paul Daley. At UFC 113 in Montreal, after Koscheck rendered Daley helpless for three rounds by keeping him on his back, Daley took a swing at the game’s great provocateur after the bell. That incident got Daley banished from the UFC. And the bad blood between the two now dovetails nicely to the Bellator stage, which of late has been all about housing unresolved vendettas (see Shamrock versus Kimbo).

In fact, Daley is the only welterweight on roster Koscheck can legitimately say he knows anything about.

“There’s only one that I know of over there, and his name’s ‘P*ssy Boy Paul Daley,’” Koscheck says, the goading rising in his voice. “I just want to bitch slap him because, the last time we fought in Montreal, for 15 minutes I held him down and beat him up, had his back, choked him, picked him up and slammed him. You know, we were talking trash the entire fight. Like, at one point I’m on top of him whispering in his ear, ‘you can’t get up boy,’ and he said, ‘let me up and fight me like a man.’

“I didn’t know there were certain rules in mixed martial arts where you have to let them up to fight them like a man. His new nickname for me from here on out is “Pussy Boy.” We’ve had this little beef, and we’ve been talking shit to each other on Facebook quite a bit. We don’t like each other. It’s funny that we’re going to get a chance to settle the score again inside the Bellator cage.

Koscheck has been on record for the last decade talking about being a businessman. As a product of the American Kickboxing Academy, he opened his own facility in Fresno back in 2010. At that time, he was driving a 2007 Ferrari F430 Spider coupé. He was appearing in music videos for bands named after classic automobiles. He was investing in many directions, and closing in on a title shot.

Nothing has changed except for most everything in 2015.

Yet even with five straight losses and a chorus of people calling for him to retire, he still knows his own name value because he went out and discovered it.

“My first thing was fighting out my UFC contract, because I’m a business man, and what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s about dollars and sense,” he says. “I knew the only way to see what my true market value is was to fight my contract out. I would suggest that all fighters fight their contracts out. That’s my opinion. In my opinion you’ve got to fight your contracts out to see what your value is. The reason Gilbert Melendez got paid? He fought his contract out. He was a free agent, and he negotiated. That’s the smartest thing these fighters can do.”

Now Koscheck is back. Or, Koscheck is still around, as the case may be, because he never really went away. He’s just going back home under a new set of circumstances, with a circular cage instead of one with eight sides, on familiar airwaves.

“Spike TV is the godfather when it comes to mixed martial arts,” he says. “Just to get the chance to see [Spike TV’s president] Kevin Kay and Scott Coker inside the cage, getting ready to kick someone’s ass…I’m so excited.”

Somehow, even with a five-fight losing streak and the proverbial writing showing up all over the wall, you knew Josh Koscheck wasn’t going to just put his shoes back on and walk away from fighting. Koscheck came into public consciousness sort of dressed as a troll (and still sporting his Edinboro singlet attitude-wise) during his stint on the original Ultimate Fighter.

And he’s still trolling at 37 years old. Perceptively, anyway.

Koscheck calls it business. He signed a contract with Bellator last week and then started seeing the full circle poetry of the moment. Koscheck began his career on Spike TV a decade ago, and now in the twilight he re-enters the space. He believes, against popular opinion, that there’s a lot more cagework left in him to do. And besides, there’s “P*ssy Boy Paul Daley” hovering around out there on the Bellator plains. That’s a piece of unfinished business that’s good enough to turn his pupils into dollar signs.

What am I talking about? Here. Let me get out of the way and have Koscheck himself tell you, in the only way he can — which is to say without a filter, and in the third person.

“These fighters today bitch and complain about money, and bitch and complain about the Reebok deal, but they don’t want to stick together and do anything,” he says. “It’s like, hey, fight your contract out and see what your market value is. That’s how all this came about.

“I just said, hey Bob [Cook], I’m interested in fighting again, let’s see what we can get. And Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin at Zinkin Entertainment contacted Scott [Coker] after our time was up and we started negotiating. Scott put an offer up on the table that we couldn’t refuse, and we posed it to the UFC and they couldn’t match it, and here Josh Koscheck is signed with Bellator, back on Spike TV again. Right where my career started. And if it wasn’t for Spike TV, there is no UFC. Everybody needs to remember that.”

Koscheck cackled back in the day when he soaked a drunk Chris Leben with a hose as he slept off his rounds on the front lawn. That was how it began. He also beat Leben on Episode Six, and then Chris Sanford officially in the Finale. After that he went 14-5 in the UFC before the recent skid, including two bouts against longtime champ Georges St-Pierre, one of them for the title. It was a hell of a run until a split-decision loss against Johny Hendricks in May 2012 sort of set the spiral in motion.

Since that time, Koscheck has been finished four times in a row — twice by knockout, twice by submission. In his last fight, against Erick Silva, he was choked out somewhat unceremoniously in the first round. That came just three weeks after Jake Ellenberger finished him with a north-south choke.

“I went down there [against Silva] and made a mistake and got caught,” he says. “That’s part of mixed martial arts. So, you know, it what it is. Everybody’s going to be all, ‘Kos should retire,’ I’ll hear it all.

“But let me be the judge and say when it’s time, and let me close people around me be the judge and say that I should retire. I have good people around me, and Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin believe in me. And now Scott Coker and Spike TV believe in me. Now Bellator believes in me. It’s just a snowball effect. I’ve got good people around me, and I’ll be the one to decide when I should retire.”

As far as Koscheck’s concerned, everything that stood before his signing with Bellator belongs to the ether. Including him retiring Matt Hughes at UFC 135, and him absolutely flattening Yoshiyuki Yoshida with right hands at that Fight for the Troops card back in 2008. He says all of it, the good and the bad…it’s all ground zero now.

“I think I’m at 0-0 again as a record,” he says. “I haven’t won and I haven’t lost yet. This is all new to me, as it was for you guys who were all shocked that I signed with Bellator. It’s all new to me as well. It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for me to start my career over at 37 years old, and just erase what happened 10 or 15 or however many fights I had in the UFC, and just start fresh. I haven’t been this excited since the Ultimate Fighter days.”

One memory that stubbornly remains is that of Paul Daley. At UFC 113 in Montreal, after Koscheck rendered Daley helpless for three rounds by keeping him on his back, Daley took a swing at the game’s great provocateur after the bell. That incident got Daley banished from the UFC. And the bad blood between the two now dovetails nicely to the Bellator stage, which of late has been all about housing unresolved vendettas (see Shamrock versus Kimbo).

In fact, Daley is the only welterweight on roster Koscheck can legitimately say he knows anything about.

“There’s only one that I know of over there, and his name’s ‘P*ssy Boy Paul Daley,’” Koscheck says, the goading rising in his voice. “I just want to bitch slap him because, the last time we fought in Montreal, for 15 minutes I held him down and beat him up, had his back, choked him, picked him up and slammed him. You know, we were talking trash the entire fight. Like, at one point I’m on top of him whispering in his ear, ‘you can’t get up boy,’ and he said, ‘let me up and fight me like a man.’

“I didn’t know there were certain rules in mixed martial arts where you have to let them up to fight them like a man. His new nickname for me from here on out is “Pussy Boy.” We’ve had this little beef, and we’ve been talking shit to each other on Facebook quite a bit. We don’t like each other. It’s funny that we’re going to get a chance to settle the score again inside the Bellator cage.

Koscheck has been on record for the last decade talking about being a businessman. As a product of the American Kickboxing Academy, he opened his own facility in Fresno back in 2010. At that time, he was driving a 2007 Ferrari F430 Spider coupé. He was appearing in music videos for bands named after classic automobiles. He was investing in many directions, and closing in on a title shot.

Nothing has changed except for most everything in 2015.

Yet even with five straight losses and a chorus of people calling for him to retire, he still knows his own name value because he went out and discovered it.

“My first thing was fighting out my UFC contract, because I’m a business man, and what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s about dollars and sense,” he says. “I knew the only way to see what my true market value is was to fight my contract out. I would suggest that all fighters fight their contracts out. That’s my opinion. In my opinion you’ve got to fight your contracts out to see what your value is. The reason Gilbert Melendez got paid? He fought his contract out. He was a free agent, and he negotiated. That’s the smartest thing these fighters can do.”

Now Koscheck is back. Or, Koscheck is still around, as the case may be, because he never really went away. He’s just going back home under a new set of circumstances, with a circular cage instead of one with eight sides, on familiar airwaves.

“Spike TV is the godfather when it comes to mixed martial arts,” he says. “Just to get the chance to see [Spike TV’s president] Kevin Kay and Scott Coker inside the cage, getting ready to kick someone’s ass…I’m so excited.”