For the first time since becoming involved with Titan Fighting Championship in December 2013, Jeff Aronson finds himself battling some public backlash toward the promotion.
Usually regarded as a professional organization by any definition of the word, Titan FC gained some critics in recent weeks, beginning at Titan FC 31 on Oct. 31.
That event was scheduled to feature a main event showdown between former UFC fighters Mike Ricci and Yoshiyuki Yoshida, but the fight never materialized after Ricci missed weight, and an unfortunate series of events followed.
On the surface, it looks like the situation broke down like this: Ricci missed weight by two pounds. Yoshida decided the fight wasn’t worth taking, so he declined. Titan FC cut Yoshida.
That, according to Aronson, paints a completely inaccurate picture of how the situation actually unfolded. It was more complicated and more involved than that.
Ricci, coming off a Titan FC 29 victory over George Sotiropoulos on Aug. 22, struggled keeping his weight down throughout camp, and the issue worsened as fight night drew near.
Despite Ricci‘s best efforts, the cut to 155 pounds just wasn’t happening.
“The weight was just not off the right way. Ricci was doing salt baths and going in and out of those baths before the event,” Aronson told Bleacher Report. “He got down to 161, and then the morning of he was still 161, so nothing floated off over night at all.
“He did a few more baths that day, they took him to the sauna. … He was in and out of the sauna for a couple hours when Firas [Zahabi] called me and said, ‘Look, Ricci has been in and out of the sauna a bunch of times, I think five or six times. … He’s dry. He’s not even sweating. There is nothing coming out of him. He’s starting not to feel good, and if we continue, it’s going to affect his health. He could pass out in the sauna.'”
From there, Aronson made the call to have Ricci weigh in.
“We’re not going to risk the health of an athlete for anything,” he said. “I don’t care who the athlete is, I’m not going to endanger the athlete to make weight. There’s always another fight, you know?”
Looking “literally like a bag of bones,” according to Aronson, Ricci missed weight by two pounds for the 155-pound title affair, clocking in at 157.
As is standard order when a fighter misses weight for a title fight, the bout was demoted to a non-title affair, and Yoshida accepted the fight knowing Ricci missed weight. Ricci would give over 20 percent of his purse to Yoshida, and the fight would go on.
But things spiraled out of control from there, as Aronson tells it.
“Yoshida was there, his manager and I got on the phone immediately after weigh-ins with Yoshida there,” Aronson said. “His manager explained the situation in Japanese to Yoshida, Yoshida agreed to the fight, contractually agreed to fight Mike Ricci in a three-round fight. Yoshida had the choice: five rounds or three rounds. Yoshida actually picked three rounds, and then we said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ I have the emails, I have the texts, I have everything. I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ The fight is on. Everything was agreed upon.”
The next morning, though, things took a sharp turn, and Yoshida refused to fight. Despite Titan’s best efforts, there was no convincing Yoshida to fight that evening. He remembered a previous loss against current UFC light heavyweight Anthony Johnson that developed in a similar fashion, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“The next morning, Yoshida woke up and decided that he did not want to fight after he contractually obligated himself to the fight,” Aronson said. “So, at that point, I went to his room. I actually went down with Firas Zahabi, who actually trained Yoshida before. … He knows Yoshida and he went and he implored to Yoshida that there was nothing else that Mike could have done to get down to weight. Yoshida kept saying that he didn’t feel like fighting, it’s not in his head anymore, and he kept bringing up Anthony Johnson, that he got knocked out in five seconds or something when Anthony Johnson missed weight. It’s like it was embedded in his brain. He was taking over. He just couldn’t get out of his own way, if that makes sense.
“I couldn’t, and his management could not convince him. And everyone was in agreement that he agreed to take the fight, he should be in the fight, there was no reason for this. He just could not get over it.”
Realizing that the fight was in serious jeopardy, Aronson pulled out all the stops to try to change Yoshida‘s mind. He offered to make the fight a welterweight title bout.
Yoshida still was not having it.
“Yoshida would not fight. Period,” Aronson said. “I really did not have a choice. First of all, I don’t know if Ricci made weight that Yoshida would’ve fought. I don’t know what was going through Yoshida‘s head. But he was very set, and his wife was screaming, ‘No, no, no,’ to Yoshida fighting, so I don’t know. I don’t know what to say other than that it was a collapse.”
Since this all happened on the morning of the fight, Aronson realized he had no choice but to sever ties with Yoshida. This behavior, in his eyes and in the company’s eyes, was unacceptable, and it put the organization in an undeserved bind.
“The reason I did what I did with Yoshida was because he truly, by agreeing to a contracted weight then pulling out that next day, just put the promotion in such a terrible position. And there’s no excuse for that. There’s no excuse for it,” Aronson said. “Who pulls out of a bout over two pounds once you’ve already agreed, it’s already been explained to you by your management? And then the next day, the only reason you don’t fight is because you don’t feel like it.”
Making the situation even murkier, Ricci is managed by Titan FC chief operating officer Lex McMahon and Alchemist Management, a company that manages fighters from Titan FC all the way up to the UFC. Because of this, many fans saw the decision to cut Yoshida as a conflict of interest for Titan. Maybe it were “getting back at” Yoshida for costing Ricci the chance to fight and to cash a paycheck.
That is not the case either, according to Aronson.
“I cut Yoshida, not Lex McMahon. Let me be clear with that,” Aronson said. “The other thing is: I don’t care who manages who. The only thing I care about is putting on the best possible fights for the fans. Given that situation, what would it help, how is it a conflict of interest that Yoshida was cut? What difference is that to Ricci or to the promotion or anyone? It was a terrible situation, and my faith was lost in Yoshida. And Mike is going to have to earn my faith back, too.
“Ricci kicked off the events, but that is not the reason Yoshida pulled out of the fight. That is what people don’t understand. Mike missing weight was wrong and we could talk about that, but that’s something that’s happened 100 times before in a fight. Never before was somebody contracted to take the fight, then the morning of the fight said, ‘I’m not going to fight. I don’t feel like it.’ I’ve never heard of it happening. Yoshida‘s management has never heard of it happening. None of us have heard of it happening. None of us.”
Eventually, Titan FC featherweights Desmond Green and Miguel Torres would be promoted to the main event, a fight in which Green won by spectacular first-round knockout.
“Thank god for Desmond Green. That kid stepped up with one of the best finishes of the year,” Aronson said.
Immediately after that event, though, Titan FC hit another bump in the road. Their next event, Titan FC 32, didn’t come together as planned, and Aronson pulled the plug, moving it from Nov. 20 in Georgia to Dec. 19 in Massachusetts (h/t MMAjunkie.com).
“If it’s [a fight card’s] not good enough for me to put out, then I am not going to do it. Period,” Aronson said. “So, I said I’m not doing it. Unfortunately, a few fights that were supposed to take place didn’t end up happening, and I knew that doing it in Lowell, Massachusetts, we already have some incredible fights lined up, so I’m going to put on an absolutely killer card in Lowell, and I just said, ‘Let’s give the fans what they deserve. Let’s put the best fights on. Let’s do an amazing event.'”
Aronson, however, feels that all this is in the past, and now he can get back to what he loves doing: putting on great fights for the fans.
“I’ve always been a man of my word and I’ve always been true to sticking to my morals, and that is that I’m only going to put on the best event that I can,” he said.
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