Former UFC middleweight Alan Belcher showcased his freakish new frame in his boxing debut, finishing Ryan Shough at a recent Summit FC bout. Belcher left MMA in 2013 after a long career in the UFC octagon. He faced the likes of Michael Bisping, Yushin Okami, and Patrick Cote during his time with the promotion. A […]
Former UFC middleweight Alan Belcher showcased his freakish new frame in his boxing debut, finishing Ryan Shough at a recent Summit FC bout.
Belcher left MMA in 2013 after a long career in the UFC octagon. He faced the likes of Michael Bisping, Yushin Okami, and Patrick Cote during his time with the promotion.
A lot has changed over the years for Belcher, a former UFC middleweight that has someone moved up to heavyweight for this new venture in boxing.
Belcher, like many of his former UFC colleagues, has gotten the urge to compete again and transition from MMA to boxing. His boxing debut went almost as perfect as one could hope for, as he overwhelmed Shough with a few knockdowns en route to a second-round finish at SFC 39.
Alan Belcher Is The Latest In A Slew Of Former UFC Standouts To Compete In Boxing
Belcher, along with former UFC champions Vitor Belfort and Anderson Silva, have gotten off to great stars in their young boxing careers. Silva most recently defeated another former UFC champ, Tito Ortiz at a Triller boxing event earlier this year.
On that same card, Belfort knocked out heavyweight boxing legend Evander Holyfield in mere seconds.
Belcher made his professional MMA debut back in 2004, before signing with the UFC in 2006. He had a relatively mixed-bag of a UFC career but did earn wins over the likes of Sean Salmon, Cote, and Rousimar Palhares.
It’s unclear what Belcher’s future looks like in the boxing world, but he’s already off to a great start in his new career venture. At 37 years old, he could still have plenty of time left in the ring, especially without cutting down to 185 pounds as he did in the UFC.
What is your reaction to Alan Belcher’s new and improved physique in boxing?
The pen has come to paper for a new fight deal for Alan Belcher. No more 4-oz MMA gloves for the UFC veteran. Instead of entering the cage, Belcher will be testing the waters of the bare-knuckle boxing ring. Belcher competed in an outstanding number of 15 UFC fights, debuting in 2006. Belcher would boast […]
The pen has come to paper for a new fight deal for Alan Belcher.
No more 4-oz MMA gloves for the UFC veteran. Instead of entering the cage, Belcher will be testing the waters of the bare-knuckle boxing ring.
Belcher competed in an outstanding number of 15 UFC fights, debuting in 2006. Belcher would boast wins over the likes of Sean Salmon, Ed Herman, Patrick Cote and Rousimar Palhares.
“The Talent” would end his UFC run with a 9-6 record. The 37 year-old hasn’t fought since losing to former UFC Champion Michael Bisping back in 2013. Belcher would officially announce his retirement from MMA in 2015.
Years after the departure from the Octagon, the desire for another fight grew. Belcher has continued to train, staying active in martial arts, despite not competing on the professional level like he once did. This would all change with a call from the BKFC, who had a exciting, new challenge for the former middleweight contender.
Being in talks with BKFC president, David Feldman, Belcher would sign a multi-fight deal to fight under their banner.
“I love what BKFC is doing,” Belcher stated in a press release. “The company is showing tremendous growth, their event production is first class and I expressed to Dave [Feldman] that I wanted to be part of it. Mentally and physically, I’m in the best shape of my life, a true world class athlete at the age of 37.”
Feldman has been keeping his eyes on Belcher for a while now and was glad to add the former 185lber to their Heavyweight roster.
“We’re very proud to announce our signing of Alan Belcher,” Feldman said. “Personally, I’ve been a fan of Alan’s since his early days in UFC and he’s been supportive of BKFC the last couple of years coming to our shows in Biloxi. He expressed interest in competing and we were able to make a deal that is beneficial to both of us.
“He’s in phenomenal shape after taking some off and fits right in with our very deep heavyweight division.”
Alan Belcher is targeted to make his Bare Knuckle debut in August, in front of his home crowd in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Ask any professional fighter and they’ll tell you the same thing – injuries are inevitable in MMA. No-one who goes toe-to-toe in the cage is going to emerge unscathed, and it’s an all-too-common occurrence for pro fighters to be dealing with niggling injuries on an ongoing basis, while most will have had spells where they’ve
Ask any professional fighter and they’ll tell you the same thing – injuries are inevitable in MMA.
No-one who goes toe-to-toe in the cage is going to emerge unscathed, and it’s an all-too-common occurrence for pro fighters to be dealing with niggling injuries on an ongoing basis, while most will have had spells where they’ve had to go under the knife or sit on the sidelines for months at a time due to more serious ailments.
In the majority of cases these are not career-threatening issues, but as you’ll read in this article, there are some stars who have had to face up to the possibility that they may lose their livelihood due to brutal injuries they’ve sustained either in competition, in training, or sometimes just in their normal everyday lives away from the cage.
We’ll also take a look at rare examples of fighters who have been competing for years, only to suddenly discover that they have an underlying medical condition that could bring their career to an abrupt halt.
At times it’s tough to read what these guys have gone through, but this the reality of being a fighter, and nobody who sets foot in the Octagon emerges unscathed.
For Michael Bisping, every match is a grudge match. The TUF 3 winner never met a fellow fighter he couldn’t take the piss out of in his 21-fight (!) UFC career, and to be totally honest, I’m kind of starting to love the dude for it.
Truly the silver-tongued, tea-sipping Diaz brother is his highness Count Bisping, who has found himself in yet another war of words with former Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold heading into their Fight Night 55 headliner on November 7th. Ben Fowlkes attempted to get to the bottom of Bisping’s seemingly endless dickishness in an interview published on MMAJunkie yesterday, and according to the Brit, pre-fight trash simply serves as his way of keeping the constant eat-train-sleep schedule from growing stale. According to Rockhold, however, Bisping is just “a prick that most people don’t like.” A regular Felix Unger and Oscar Madison these two are, I tells ya!
But as heated as Bisping vs. Rockhold has been thus far (see their “Counterpunch” segment above, their rooftop staredown, etc.), it doesn’t hold a candle to Bisping’s verbal sparring matches with Hollywood Henderson and that Bully Beatdown host guy whose life he destroyed. So it is through rage-filled, bloodshot eyes that we take a look back at Bisping’s most heated rivalries and rank them on a scale of Berk to Arselicking Plonker.
#9 — Charles McCarthy
So the saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes, and Michael Bisping is one opinionated asshole.” He’s also a guy who was never shy on confidence, which Charles “Chainsaw” McCarthy took issue with heading into their fight back at UFC 83. Oddly enough, it was actually McCarthy who attacked Bisping first through the media, telling CBS Sports:
(He’s) real arrogant, and, you know — not much else, really. He’s gonna get choked out April 19.
I have very little regard for that guy. I can’t wait to go in there and get my arm around his neck. It’s going to be a cool experience. I hope to put him to sleep before he decides to tap.
Bisping was quick to respond via his blog, The Countdown, with the following shot at McCarthy’s self-hyped BJJ credentials:
Next week’s Countdown will be filed after I’ve come face-to-face with the reigning BJJ uber-master of the galaxy. If anyone wants me to ask him for an autograph for you, please e-mail me, but keep your requests down to six per person.
When it came time to put words aside, Bisping was simply too much for his fellow TUF alum, overwhelming McCarthy with a barrage of knees (that in fact broke McCarthy’s arm) and forcing a stoppage inside of the first round. It was Bisping’s first true grudge match in the UFC, and one that would set the precedent for years to come.
For Michael Bisping, every match is a grudge match. The TUF 3 winner never met a fellow fighter he couldn’t take the piss out of in his 21-fight (!) UFC career, and to be totally honest, I’m kind of starting to love the dude for it.
Truly the silver-tongued, tea-sipping Diaz brother is his highness Count Bisping, who has found himself in yet another war of words with former Strikeforce middleweight champion Luke Rockhold heading into their Fight Night 55 headliner on November 7th. Ben Fowlkes attempted to get to the bottom of Bisping’s seemingly endless dickishness in an interview published on MMAJunkie yesterday, and according to the Brit, pre-fight trash simply serves as his way of keeping the constant eat-train-sleep schedule from growing stale. According to Rockhold, however, Bisping is just “a prick that most people don’t like.” A regular Felix Unger and Oscar Madison these two are, I tells ya!
But as heated as Bisping vs. Rockhold has been thus far (see their “Counterpunch” segment above, their rooftop staredown, etc.), it doesn’t hold a candle to Bisping’s verbal sparring matches with Hollywood Henderson and that Bully Beatdown host guy whose life he destroyed. So it is through rage-filled, bloodshot eyes that we take a look back at Bisping’s most heated rivalries and rank them on a scale of Berk to Arselicking Plonker.
#9 — Charles McCarthy
So the saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes, and Michael Bisping is one opinionated asshole.” He’s also a guy who was never shy on confidence, which Charles “Chainsaw” McCarthy took issue with heading into their fight back at UFC 83. Oddly enough, it was actually McCarthy who attacked Bisping first through the media, telling CBS Sports:
(He’s) real arrogant, and, you know — not much else, really. He’s gonna get choked out April 19.
I have very little regard for that guy. I can’t wait to go in there and get my arm around his neck. It’s going to be a cool experience. I hope to put him to sleep before he decides to tap.
Bisping was quick to respond via his blog, The Countdown, with the following shot at McCarthy’s self-hyped BJJ credentials:
Next week’s Countdown will be filed after I’ve come face-to-face with the reigning BJJ uber-master of the galaxy. If anyone wants me to ask him for an autograph for you, please e-mail me, but keep your requests down to six per person.
When it came time to put words aside, Bisping was simply too much for his fellow TUF alum, overwhelming McCarthy with a barrage of knees (that in fact broke McCarthy’s arm) and forcing a stoppage inside of the first round. It was Bisping’s first true grudge match in the UFC, and one that would set the precedent for years to come.
Bisping’s war of words with PRIDE legend Wanderlei Silva prior to UFC 110, if the Interwebs are to be believed, doesn’t seem like one that “The Count” actually started, hence its ranking on this list. By this point in his career, Bisping had already firmly established himself as one of the best trash-talkers in the business, whereas Silva was already being labeled by some people not named Michael Bisping as “a fading legend with a weird new face who is growing increasingly desperate for a win.” Still, Wanderlei struck first, stating how much he “didn’t like” Bisping (classic diss!) in several interviews during the lead-up, prompting Bisping to pretty much declare the same (albeit in slightly more comprehensible “English”). Words were shared between the two at the UFC 110 pre-fight press conference (see above), and a week later it was on, son.
The fight itself was a pretty back-and-forth affair, but thanks to a late knockdown at the end of the third and the most brutal guillotine attempt you will ever see in your life, “The Axe Murderer” had the last laugh, emerging victorious by unanimous decision.
Cung Le never had a bad word to say about nobody, and by all accounts appears to be an incredibly well-spoken, humble guy. Of course, this can only mean one thing (if you’re Michael Bisping): He’s a phony. A big, fat phony.
And because Le was/is such an obvious phony, Bisping felt obliged to tell every two-bit reporter in shouting distance how much of a phony Le was in the weeks before their Fight Night 48 scrap. Like during this fan Q&A, for instance:
I went to Macao for the launch press conference with Cung Le in June, and I was very polite, very professional. I exchanged all the pleasantries, gave him all the small talk as you are supposed to in these situations, and I even went as far as pretending to be absolutely blown away that he’s apparently friends with Channing Tatum. … Then I see him on UFC.com doing a Fight Club Q&A and he’s talking a load of bulls–t about me. Basically, he’s jumped on the same old, boring bandwagon everyone else who fights me does, which is to say what a smack-talker I am while, as always, they are the ones who talk crap first. What a phony. If he had a problem with me then he could have spared me all the boring anecdotes about Channing Tatum.
You see, in Michael Bisping’s mind, calling someone a phony who talks trash behind your back while simultaneously talking trash behind *their* back is in no way hypocritical. It makes total sense, actually, and somehow makes you appear as the victim in a situation that you are totally fueling. Have I mentioned how much I love this guy?
Anyways, the fight was nothing short of spectacular, and arguably Bisping’s best performance in the octagon to date. Both fighters trading heavy shots for four rounds and wobbled each other on multiple occasions, but it was Bisping’s renowned cardio and crisp boxing that ultimately sealed him the victory via TKO. Cung Le’s face has never recovered.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about each of Michael Bisping’s rivalries (the most consistent, anyway) is how quickly they seem to spark from the smallest catalyst. Bisping’s ability to create something from nothing is second to none — like watching a small snowball roll down a mountainside, accumulating mass and gathering speed by the second, until it takes out a bus full of blind orphans who just happened to be taking that route for their yearly field trip. What Kseniya Simonova is to sand painting, Michael Bisping is to schoolyard displays of masculinity, and I say that not as a criticism, but as a compliment of his ability to sell a grudge match where none seemingly exists.
Take the genesis of his beef with Vitor Belfort, for instance. According to Bisping, the whole thing started when he heard through the grapevine that Belfort had called him “a hooligan.” Seems innocent enough, right? That word may have a bit more context behind it when applied to British folk, but being called a hooligan is way lighter than, say, being called an potato-faced little sh*teater with dicks for fingers, right?
Wrong. Bisping lashed out a Belfort almost immediately, telling him to stick the apologetic text messages he had been sent “up his ass” (Belfort’s ass, that is) and calling the Brazilian a “cheater” for hitting so many people in the back of the head over the years. Again, I should clarify that illegally kneeing an opponent while he’s down and spitting on his cornermen is one thing, but hitting people in the back of the head is entirely something else. To Michael Bisping.
In any case, pissing off “TRTor” turned out to be a huge mistake for The Count, and after a couple of intense staredowns, Belfort proceeded to channel his inner Major Payne and put his foot right upside Bisping’s head at UFC on FX 7. Surely this lesson in humility would mark the very last time Bisping engaged in pre-fight trash-talk…
JK, you guys! Bisping’s very next fight against Alan Belcher would be a particularly heated affair, rife with some of The Count’s most scathing insults to date. Hyeah!!!
Although Bisping originally dismissed Belcher’s callouts as yet another case of some a-hole trying to become famous off his good name, he simply couldn’t help himself after the two were paired together in the co-main event of UFC 159. Bisping first took to his blog to drop some sick burns about how Belcher had stunk up the joint against Yushin Okami at UFC 155 (a sentiment that Belcher would probably agree with) and how he had probably detached his retina due to watching too much Internet porn. He then dubbed Belcher “some retard from Mississippi” and threatened to “smack the stupid look” off his face during their pre-fight presser. While I don’t personally think that smacking a retard would be a great move from a publicity standpoint, such is Count Bisping.
While Belcher didn’t deliver much in terms of witty repartee, he did promise to knock Bisping out, which was something that fans has been praying to see ever since that time Bisping was knocked out in the fight before this one. But unfortunately, neither Bisping nor Belcher delivered on the hype, and the fight equated to little more than an above-average sparring session. Until Bisping rendered Belcher unable to continue due with a particularly vicious eye poke in the third round, that is, and secured a technical decision victory.
Accidental or otherwise, the eye poke earned Bisping even more heat than usual from irate fans, who could only take solace when the MMA Gods evened the scales a few months later.
Don’t let the “A” in MMA fool you, mixed martial arts fighters are *not* artists…at least, not in the traditional sense of the term. Look no further than the hilariously atrocious inkwork that so often adorns their bodies for proof of this. Between the non-tribal tribal arm bands, the last name tramp stamps, and the ill-advised branding attempts, MMA fighters (and their fans — see above) sport some of the worst tattoos you’ll ever see outside of a prison cell. But who has the worst tattoo of them all? The CagePotato Roundtable investigates…
Matt Horwich‘s musical pencil is like something out of a nightmare. It’s a bunch of unrelated visual signifiers held together by an inscrutable logic, and the only thing being conveyed is dread. You wake up sweating after seeing this thing, and you tell your wife, “Shit, I had that dream about my stepfather again, but this time he was a pencil,” and she looks at you, trying to feign sympathy, but the apparition simply can’t be verbalized. Words will never do it justice, because it’s so much more than just “pencil, musical notes, angry face,” it’s what the pencil represents. That goddamned abusive drunk piece of shit, who hated himself because he couldn’t write songs like Neil Diamond, so he took it out on you and your mom. That face. You could put it on a cantaloupe, a hammer, the front of a steamboat, and it would still be him.
Look, I get it, Matt Horwich is eccentric. His concept of reality is not the same as yours. I’m trying to avoid judgment here, but I just can’t relate to the sort of mind that would put this on his body. It’s awful. A worn-down pencil with a ragged eraser. A face devoid of most human characteristics. And three notes — whole note, half note, quarter note! — flying upwards. It’s not a singing pencil. It’s a scowling pencil with musical notation ejecting from the end that is responsible for deletion, not creation. It’s a contradiction, and it’s unsettling. The pencil seems to be straining to get these notes out, and for what? To express that the artistic process is torture? Does the pencil wish it was a violin instead? Does Matt Horwich even remember getting this tattoo, or did it just kind of appear one day? You’re seeing it too, right? The pencil with the face? I’m not crazy, am I?
(And this debate is ALLLLLLLL OVVVERRRRR!!!)
Don’t let the “A” in MMA fool you, mixed martial arts fighters are *not* artists…at least, not in the traditional sense of the term. Look no further than the hilariously atrocious inkwork that so often adorns their bodies for proof of this. Between the non-tribal tribal arm bands, the last name tramp stamps, and the ill-advised branding attempts, MMA fighters (and their fans — see above) sport some of the worst tattoos you’ll ever see outside of a prison cell. But who has the worst tattoo of them all? The CagePotato Roundtable investigates…
Matt Horwich‘s musical pencil is like something out of a nightmare. It’s a bunch of unrelated visual signifiers held together by an inscrutable logic, and the only thing being conveyed is dread. You wake up sweating after seeing this thing, and you tell your wife, “Shit, I had that dream about my stepfather again, but this time he was a pencil,” and she looks at you, trying to feign sympathy, but the apparition simply can’t be verbalized. Words will never do it justice, because it’s so much more than just “pencil, musical notes, angry face,” it’s what the pencil represents. That goddamned abusive drunk piece of shit, who hated himself because he couldn’t write songs like Neil Diamond, so he took it out on you and your mom. That face. You could put it on a cantaloupe, a hammer, the front of a steamboat, and it would still be him.
Look, I get it, Matt Horwich is eccentric. His concept of reality is not the same as yours. I’m trying to avoid judgment here, but I just can’t relate to the sort of mind that would put this on his body. It’s awful. A worn-down pencil with a ragged eraser. A face devoid of most human characteristics. And three notes — whole note, half note, quarter note! — flying upwards. It’s not a singing pencil. It’s a scowling pencil with musical notation ejecting from the end that is responsible for deletion, not creation. It’s a contradiction, and it’s unsettling. The pencil seems to be straining to get these notes out, and for what? To express that the artistic process is torture? Does the pencil wish it was a violin instead? Does Matt Horwich even remember getting this tattoo, or did it just kind of appear one day? You’re seeing it too, right? The pencil with the face? I’m not crazy, am I?
Portraits are the improv comedy of the tattoo world. Combine a talented artist with a great subject and the right canvas, and, yeah, you have a pretty great piece of work that you can appreciate. Otherwise? It’s trash. All of it. It’s why we end up with things like Ronda Rousey looking like a puffy-faced Mermaid wearing UFC-braded Shooto pillow gloves.
Which brings us to Alan Belcher‘s Johnny Cash tattoo. Belcher soft-debuted this…thing…at UFC 93 against Denis Kang. Goldstein properly described it as “terrifying.” The UFC would be thrilled to have an afternoon PPV show from Ireland headlined by two aging veterans pulling in 350k buys in 2014, but this was 2009, a time when MMA was golden and Brock Lesnar its king. So, when Belcher fought Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 100, he introduced his monster to millions of people worldwide.
What can be said about Belcher’s tattoo that hasn’t already been said about pig-nosed Polish grandmothers who just caught their grandson masturbating to last year’s Sears Christmas catalog? Belcher nearly lost his career due to a detached retina in 2010, though I’ve always suspected that his eyes caught sight of his left arm in a storefront window and called it a day. Belcher’s currently in a St-Pierre retirement purgatory. We can only hope he’s made the proper modifications to turn his Johnny Cash into a My Cousin Vinny-era Joe Pesci.
Tribal markings. Olde English letters. Skulls, pit bulls and fleurs de lys. MMA fighters and generic, awful tattoos truly go hand in grenade-tatted hand. Yet despite the plethora of options I could have considered, one truly craptacular piece managed to immediately stand out in my mind when this topic was introduced: UFC heavyweightShawn Jordan’s chest piece.
This thing is practically a check-list for “tough white guy” tattoos. Nautical starz? Check. A Native American (because all Southern white people claim to be at least 1/8th Native American) with his arms menacingly crossed? Got it. A(n LSU) tiger? Of course. All with a tattered American flag waving defiantly in the background? Like you don’t know.
Shawn Jordan’s left pectoral of clichés would be bad enough if a decent artist actually worked on it, but the fact that it’s as poorly executed as it is really puts this thing over the top. Tattoo artists are fond of saying “Good tattoos aren’t cheap, and cheap tattoos aren’t good.” Judging by the quality of Jordan’s ink, I’m willing to bet that this piece set him back two cases of Natty Light and maybe, maybe an autographed LSU football. I’m on the fence about the football because I’d like to think that a ball autographed by the 2008 National Championship team would have at least earned the horrifically disproportionate Native American a six-pack that didn’t span the entire length of his torso.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the hick who scratched his way through Jordan’s chest piece actually considers himself a “talented” tattoo “artist.” Or if every time he sees Shawn Jordan in the cage, his chest swells with pride as he tells anyone who will listen that his “gun” is behind that eyesore. “I did that, right there! That’s professional work for half the price of one of them fangled tattoo parlors, and it’s just as good as what you’d get from a licensed shop!”
Years before Conor McGregor and his Cosby Sweater ink became the biggest star in UFC history, the main draw for the promotion was the Undisputed Heavyweight Champ Brock Lesnar who, coincidentally, sported the worst MMA tattoo ever. There is a plethora of ways to describe what Lesnar’s tat resembles but even though I am in my 30’s, my sense of humor leans more towards a kid in junior high. So I am just going to come right out and say it.
Brock Lesnar’s ink looks like a giant penis and we all know it. Seriously, it looks like the tattoo artist took a picture of Ron Jeremy’s erect crank and then stuck a handle on the base of it. To make matters worse, there appears to be a small amount of red blood oozing from the top of the dick which makes it even more reprehensible and disturbing but at least we got the nickname Cock Chestner out of it, I guess.
There isn’t a whole lot more to elaborate on and I really struggled with how I was supposed to stretch this post into 3 paragraphs so it didn’t look like I gave a half-assed effort on this CP Roundtable submission. I thought I’d try to mix in as many amusing penis slang words (i.e. Foreskin Flute, Trouser Snake, Veinous Maximus, Tube Steak, Satan’s Clarinet, Clam Hammer, The Bone Ranger), but I didn’t think that would be a very mature thing to do. So with that being said, here’s 101 Big Dick Jokes.
Substance abuse, no-shows, and showing up when he shouldn’t have shown outlines what the Brazilian’s career has looked like the past couple of years, yet it’s not like his legend didn’t go out with a bang (technically, it’s still going).
Getting “the same thing Mike Tyson has on his face” just wasn’t enough for the former Pride and WEC veteran; he just had to ink his body with the worst possible eyesores known to man. It’s rather difficult to pick just one, but that’s the rule of the game.
Filho’s “Million Dollar Bulldog” is truly a work of art. Before entering his DREAM 10 bout against Melvin Manhoef, the MMA bubble was treated to the fighter’s new work, which is a bulldog centering a million dollar bill, and beneath that, two bulldogs seemingly about to trade fisticuffs. Now, maybe this was somewhat motivational for the troubled slugger, however, it just takes the cake in the worst way possible. It even came with a bonus “Reward Hunter” (pun not intended, but now, sort of) on his upper chest. It’s like having the best entrée in your life, followed by a meal that puts you in a delusional state where you’re content with your life coming to a close. Furthermore, it’s incredibly creative. To this day, nobody really knows what that is.
Honorable mention would have to be Filho’s forearm tattoo, “Placartoon Tattoo,” which is the shop that marked him, meaning it’s basically a glorified ad on Filho for the rest of his life. I really hope this guy strings a few wins together and makes it into the UFC. Then he could get a Harley Davidson tattoo on the other side of his face.
Look, we all know that art is subjective, and as a guy who sports several poorly-rendered and half-finished tattoos that could be considered terrible (tree of life, vegvisir, giant maze, etc.) by most people, I am always tread lightly when it comes to shitting on someones ink. Do I think that Alan Belcher has the single worst portrait of Johnny Cash known to man? Without a doubt. Do I think pasty white giants from Maine would be best to reconsider getting that “tribal” tattoo ripped right from an Affliction shirt? Of course. But as I’ve said before, we’ve all made mistakes in our youthful arrogance, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start sounding like a hypocrite while knocking these (albeit atrocious) displays of artwork down a peg.
Instead, I’m choosing to focus on the tattoos that hint at more than just a mistake made during a drunken night out. I’m choosing to focus on the men behind the tattoos, or rather, the tattoos that say a lot more about their human canvas (as Dave Navarro would put it) than simply, “I want to look badass.” So for me, the worst tattoos in MMA is really a 4-way tie between Melvin Costa, Brandon Saling, Toni Valtonen, and Dustin Holyko.
You see, all four of these men are garbage — White Power, Neo-Nazi garbage. One of them’s also a convicted pedo. They all also happen to be MMA fighters. To their credit, all 4 of these men are very upfront about just how garbage they are, and would like you to know from the moment you lay eyes on them that, yes, you are looking at garbage. Two of them rock swastika tats, one rocks a Heil Hitler “88″ tattoo with SS lightning bolts, and the other simply has “White Power” inked on either arm. What, did you expect racism to embrace subtlety just because we’re living in Obama’s America?
Despite their…let’s call them “sketchy” pasts, some of these garbage men continue to have fights booked to this day, by promoters who I can only assume are also garbage. One of them even had a one-off fight for Strikeforce before that blew up in their face. The worst part? That fight (Brandon Saling vs. Roger Bowling) was pretty goddamn awesome, although hearing Mauro Ranallo, Pat Miletich, and Frank Shamrock praise Saling for being a “natural fighter” and “tough country boy” with “impeccable instincts” seems kinda messed up in retrospect.
The pen has come to paper for a new fight deal for Alan Belcher. No more 4-oz MMA gloves for the UFC veteran. Instead of entering the cage, Belcher will be testing the waters of the bare-knuckle boxing ring. Belcher competed in an outstanding number of 15 UFC fights, debuting in 2006. Belcher would boast […]
