Tag: Brendan Schaub

Brendan Schaub: Rousey ‘Hates’ on Mayweather but Dates Travis Browne

Brendan Schaub officially let the cat out of the bag about his past romantic dealings with UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in his appearance on Joe Rogan’s Fight Companion earlier this month.
According to Schaub, the relation…

Brendan Schaub officially let the cat out of the bag about his past romantic dealings with UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in his appearance on Joe Rogan’s Fight Companion earlier this month.

According to Schaub, the relationship never worked out because Rousey needed a guy who didn’t mind taking a “back seat.”

Two weeks have passed, and Schaub is once again knee-deep in Rousey conversation. This time, the topic revolved around Rousey and UFC heavyweight Travis Browne. The UFC recently removed Browne from International Fight Week after Jenna Renee Webb, his wife, posted pictures on social media implicating him in domestic abuse.

In a released statement (via MMAJunkie’s Matt Erickson and Steven Marrocco), Browne denied all allegations of any form of physical abuse. A thorough investigation into the matter by an independent party from the UFC is ongoing.

If Browne didn’t already have enough on his plate, he was recently caught on camera in a restaurant sitting at a table side-by-side with Rousey.

Schaub addressed the matter in a short clip from an upcoming episode of The Fighter & The Kid podcast. A video from the segment was uploaded by Reddit user Aloumun and can be viewed in full here (warning: NSFW Language).

“It’s tough when you go, ‘Don’t be a do-nothing b—h’ and you hate on Mayweather, and then your boyfriend’s over here beating the s—t out of his wife,” said Schaub. “Not to mention, he’s still married. So it’s tough when you’re a role model.”

Rousey has gone after Mayweather in the past regarding his history of domestic abuse. At the 2015 ESPY Awards, she took a direct shot at the undefeated boxing legend on the red carpet after beating him for the “Best Fighter” award.

Neither Browne nor Rousey have yet to respond to Schaub’s comments. Stay tuned to Bleacher Report as more information becomes available on this developing story. 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Brendan Schaub: Rousey ‘Hates’ on Mayweather but Dates Travis Browne

Brendan Schaub officially let the cat out of the bag about his past romantic dealings with UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in his appearance on Joe Rogan’s Fight Companion earlier this month.
According to Schaub, the relation…

Brendan Schaub officially let the cat out of the bag about his past romantic dealings with UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in his appearance on Joe Rogan’s Fight Companion earlier this month.

According to Schaub, the relationship never worked out because Rousey needed a guy who didn’t mind taking a “back seat.”

Two weeks have passed, and Schaub is once again knee-deep in Rousey conversation. This time, the topic revolved around Rousey and UFC heavyweight Travis Browne. The UFC recently removed Browne from International Fight Week after Jenna Renee Webb, his wife, posted pictures on social media implicating him in domestic abuse.

In a released statement (via MMAJunkie’s Matt Erickson and Steven Marrocco), Browne denied all allegations of any form of physical abuse. A thorough investigation into the matter by an independent party from the UFC is ongoing.

If Browne didn’t already have enough on his plate, he was recently caught on camera in a restaurant sitting at a table side-by-side with Rousey.

Schaub addressed the matter in a short clip from an upcoming episode of The Fighter & The Kid podcast. A video from the segment was uploaded by Reddit user Aloumun and can be viewed in full here (warning: NSFW Language).

“It’s tough when you go, ‘Don’t be a do-nothing b—h’ and you hate on Mayweather, and then your boyfriend’s over here beating the s—t out of his wife,” said Schaub. “Not to mention, he’s still married. So it’s tough when you’re a role model.”

Rousey has gone after Mayweather in the past regarding his history of domestic abuse. At the 2015 ESPY Awards, she took a direct shot at the undefeated boxing legend on the red carpet after beating him for the “Best Fighter” award.

Neither Browne nor Rousey have yet to respond to Schaub’s comments. Stay tuned to Bleacher Report as more information becomes available on this developing story. 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Brendan Schaub on UFC’s Reebok Deal: ‘Fighting Will Not Pay the Bills Right Now’

Brendan “Big Brown” Schaub is unafraid to speak openly on the UFC’s exclusive partnership with Reebok, and the recently turned light heavyweight fighter is not a fan. 
Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast with comedian Bryan Callen, Th…

Brendan “Big Brown” Schaub is unafraid to speak openly on the UFC’s exclusive partnership with Reebok, and the recently turned light heavyweight fighter is not a fan. 

Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast with comedian Bryan Callen, The Fighter and The Kid, Schaub laid down his thoughts on the UFC’s new sponsorship deal clearly and truthfully. 

“There came a point—especially with this Reebok deal—where I said, ‘OK,'” Schaub said on the show. “So I said to myself, ‘OK, Reebok wants my exclusive rights inside the cage for 10 grand—man! And you know what’s going on in my world as far as entertainment goes. Fighting will not pay the bills right now.” 

The former The Ultimate Fighter finalist then mentioned that, while his fighting mentality never waned, the deal totally changed his perspective on fighting when he evaluated his situation from all angles. 

“The competitor in me goes, ‘Let’s do it, man,” Schaub said. “The fighter in me, the guy who made a name for himself inside the Octagon and trains his ass off, very alive. He says, ‘Let’s fight next month.'”

“The brain and the people who are smarter than me…go, ‘No, no, no.’ You have too much else going on,” Schaub continued. “You’re making too much money elsewhere to be getting punched in the head.” 

Following this comment, Schaub talked about his recent appearance on Punch Drunk Sports, where he said the only fights that make sense for him moving forward are superfights. This comment spurred a discussion on the Mixed Martial Arts Underground forum, where some users questioned whether Schaub would ever fight again at all. 

“I go on Punch Drunk and go, ‘Man, the only thing that’s going to get me out of bed is if you gave me a superfight,'” Schaub said on The Fighter and The Kid. “You wanna give me [Quinton] Rampage Jackson or you wanna give me [Mauricio] Shogun [Rua]—a big, blockbuster fight—I’ll get out of bed for that.”

Even then, Schaub noted, the fight wouldn’t happen anytime soon.  

“No time soon, because I have some crazy stuff going on, but, man, for me to fight for 10k for the Reebok deal, you’re bats–t crazy, man. You’re not getting Big Brown for 10k. If someone came to me right now and offered me three times that money, I wouldn’t do it,” Schaub exclaimed.  

Right now, the Reebok deal is in its infancy with the UFC, and several fighters have spoken out and expressed discontent with its current terms. Schaub, however, has been one of the more vocal detractors (and certainly one of the most visible in the public eye), and his latest comments only enhance his past messages.

The issues now is whether more fighters will follow Schaub and put their fighting careers on the back burner until it makes sense to come back. The Reebok deal, for some fighters, sapped their initiative to fight by drastically reducing their paychecks. 

Even if Schaub does fight again, he already said it wouldn’t happen any time soon, and at 32 years old with 15 fights and four knockout losses under his belt, each passing day moves him a little further out of his prime. As time stretches on, a comeback becomes even less advisable, putting Brown in a precarious situation moving forward. 

In time, we may see the UFC reshape the structure and payout of this deal, but for now, Big Brown is still clearly opposed to significant pay cut he’s being forced to take at this stage in his career. 

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Brendan Schaub Planning Move to Light Heavyweight Division

Following two straight losses, The Ultimate Fighter 10 runner-up Brendan Schaub will leave the heavyweight division and drop down to the light heavyweight class.
Schaub announced his decision on The Fighter and the Kid, a podcast he co-hosts …

Following two straight losses, The Ultimate Fighter 10 runner-up Brendan Schaub will leave the heavyweight division and drop down to the light heavyweight class.

Schaub announced his decision on The Fighter and the Kid, a podcast he co-hosts with actor/comedian Bryan Callen.

“The plan is 205 and I will fight in 2015 at 205,” Schaub said.

Considering Schaub weighed in at 244 pounds for his most recent bout against Travis Browne, he has some work to do. That said, Schaub likely wasn’t watching his weight all that much in the heavyweight division. The lightest Big Brown weighed in at during his UFC career was 237 pounds for his September 2013 contest opposite Matt Mitrione and his April 2012 clash with Ben Rothwell.

In 11 UFC heavyweight outings, Schaub posted a 6-5 record. While some thought he might have had the potential to accomplish more, Schaub has had a really solid career for someone who transitioned to MMA directly from professional football.

Having lost back-to-back bouts, Schaub will be on a short leash in the light heavyweight division. It’s unlikely the UFC brass would retain him should he lose two more in a row, and there’s even a good possibility his next fight will be a must-win situation.

“Potential matchups? No idea, no clue,” Schaub said. “I’m sure you guys have better ideas than me.”

There are a plethora of options for Schaub’s debut opponent at 205 pounds. Really, any unranked competitors coming off of a loss would make sense as an adversary.

With that said, the loser of the May contest between Anthony Perosh and Sean O’Connell would be the most logical opponent for Schaub. Ilir Latifi and Ryan Jimmo would also be viable options should the UFC look to give Schaub an opponent a little bit farther up the light heavyweight ladder.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

The World MMA Awards Are a Goddamned Travesty


(Arianny Celeste, accepting her third-consecutive award for Journalist of the Year. / Photo via Getty)

By Mike Fagan

I sort of remember where I was when Fighters Only announced the first World MMA Awards. What a moment. I sat there at my desk in my two-bedroom apartment in beautiful Henderson, Nevada, reading the announcement and nominee list. I may have thought something like “This won’t last more than a year” or maybe I just finished reading and moved on with my life. December 2008 was a wild time, man.

Yet, here we are during the annual War on Christmas in 2014 and the World MMA Awards are going strong with their seventh annual edition. They proved the maybe-fictional version of my 2008 self wrong.

Fighters Only released this year’s nominee list on Monday, and I have some thoughts. Allow me to list them for you…


1. Someone ran the nominee photos through the “2003” filter. The World MMA Awards built itself a flashy website complete with a sweet animated countdown clock and high-res background video of last year’s awards and 2014 UFC highlights which I’m sure cost a lot of money to license (wink wink). Yet when you click through to vote, you find headshots of nominees that look like they were shot on a flip phone a decade ago.

2. International Fighter of the Year is still a thing. For the first two years, International Fighter of the Year was known as European Fighter of the Year, which, okay, Fighters Only is a UK publication or whatever. They renamed it for 2010, and fighters “outside the Americas” are eligible. Now I’m not sure of the point. Every winner of the award (including the original Euro winners) had a presence in the United States the year they won. Plus, MMA is a global sport, and international fighters aren’t disqualified or handicapped from winning Fighter of the Year proper. The first three winners were non-Americans Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre (who technically isn’t eligible for International Fighter of the Year anyway), and Jose Aldo. You could always present a non-UFC Fighter of the Year and prevent things like…

3. Emanuel Newton nominated for Fighter of the Year.


(Arianny Celeste, accepting her third-consecutive award for Journalist of the Year. / Photo via Getty)

By Mike Fagan

I sort of remember where I was when Fighters Only announced the first World MMA Awards. What a moment. I sat there at my desk in my two-bedroom apartment in beautiful Henderson, Nevada, reading the announcement and nominee list. I may have thought something like “This won’t last more than a year” or maybe I just finished reading and moved on with my life. December 2008 was a wild time, man.

Yet, here we are during the annual War on Christmas in 2014 and the World MMA Awards are going strong with their seventh annual edition. They proved the maybe-fictional version of my 2008 self wrong.

Fighters Only released this year’s nominee list on Monday, and I have some thoughts. Allow me to list them for you…


1. Someone ran the nominee photos through the “2003” filter. The World MMA Awards built itself a flashy website complete with a sweet animated countdown clock and high-res background video of last year’s awards and 2014 UFC highlights which I’m sure cost a lot of money to license (wink wink). Yet when you click through to vote, you find headshots of nominees that look like they were shot on a flip phone a decade ago.

2. International Fighter of the Year is still a thing. For the first two years, International Fighter of the Year was known as European Fighter of the Year, which, okay, Fighters Only is a UK publication or whatever. They renamed it for 2010, and fighters “outside the Americas” are eligible. Now I’m not sure of the point. Every winner of the award (including the original Euro winners) had a presence in the United States the year they won. Plus, MMA is a global sport, and international fighters aren’t disqualified or handicapped from winning Fighter of the Year proper. The first three winners were non-Americans Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre (who technically isn’t eligible for International Fighter of the Year anyway), and Jose Aldo. You could always present a non-UFC Fighter of the Year and prevent things like…

3. Emanuel Newton nominated for Fighter of the Year. Newton wasn’t nominated last year when he upset “King” Mo Lawal (and Bjorn Rebney) twice. So, he turns around in 2014 and rattles off wins against luminous names like Attila Vegh, Joey Beltran, and Linton Vassell and finds himself nominated. This is worse than Bloody Elbow readers voting Matt Brown as their fighter of the year in 2012.

4. Speaking of Bloody Elbow, Brent Brookhouse wasn’t nominated for journalist of the year. Bloody Elbow was given a token nomination for Media Source of the Year, so at least someone’s paying attention. Brookhouse gets left off despite a now-long history of investigative work AND breaking the biggest story of the year. If only he held a microphone, wore children’s shoes, and asked fighters about their beards…

5. Two nominees for Media Source of the Year have documented ties to the UFC. MMA Junkie belongs to USA Today, which has some sort of partnership deal with the UFC. Fightland is, in Tim Marchman’s words, a “joint UFC/Vice venture.” That same report also noted instances of Fightland editing pieces in order to appear more favorable to the promotion.

6. Mike Dolce found himself nominated for Trainer of the Year. Dolce’s claim to fame in 2014 is an ongoing feud with BJ Penn over Dolce’s work for Penn leading up to what turned out to be a disaster of a trilogy fight against Frankie Edgar. Penn isn’t the first fighter to complain about Dolce’s contributions, and both Phil Baroni and Tito Ortiz have chimed in with their thoughts on the Dolce Diet guru.

7. Someone or someones thought Brendan Schaub was worthy of a Personality of the Year nomination. Schaub co-hosts the Fighter and The Kid podcast with Bryan Callen and regularly appears on Joe Rogan’s podcast where Rogan occasionally Kano’s him in front of thousands of viewers. Schaub seems like a nice-enough and articulate-enough guy, but I couldn’t make it more than a minute into an episode of the Fighter and The Kid without feeling embarrassed for everyone involved.

8. Leading Man of the Year, a category sexist enough for the MMA community. Sorry, Shannon Knapp, no matter how many millions of streams Invicta tallies, you’ll never find yourself nominated for the de facto “promoter of the year” category. But hey, there’s a category for you if you wanna throw on a bikini and walk around with numbered signs.

9. Sponsored by Bodybuilding.com and RDX Sports. Nothing says classy gala affair like a store/forum pushing workout pills and unrealistic body expectations and a UK martial arts equipment provider with fewer Twitter followers than a certain tuber-themed MMA site.

10. Holy shit, they let the fans vote on this stuff. The World MMA Awards are determined by the Eddie Justbleeds of the world. Surely, said Justbleeds recognize the relative merits of Ray Longo’s and Duane Ludwig’s coaching techniques. Surely, they recognize such trainers as Doug Balzarini, Brian Blue, Jake Bonacci, and Joel Jamieson. Surely, Garry Cook and Victor Cui are household names. Surely, they understand the difference between “lifestyle” and “technical” clothing brands, and are familiar enough with the “technical equipment” to provide a fair and balanced ballot.

The World MMA Awards: The awards show that MMA deserves, but not the one it needs right now. Or ever.

[VIDEO] Joe Rogan Offers a Brutal Assessment of Brendan Schaub on the JRE Podcast — “You Are Not an Elite Fighter”

“You are not an elite fighter. You are predictable. The reality is, I don’t see you beating elite guys. Werdum, Cain is another level than you.”

As if Brendan Schaub‘s first round TKO loss at the hands of Travis Browne last weekend wasn’t bad enough, the verbal shellacking he received on The Joe Rogan Experience last night might’ve been even more devastating.

Sitting in with The Fighter and the Kid co-host Bryan Callen, Schaub tried to explain what went wrong against Browne at UFC 181, and when his words fell short, the always honest Rogan stepped in to dole out some brutally honest advice for a guy he considers his friend, all but demanding that he retire from the sport before he receives anymore brain damage.

“This is the reality of it: I worry about your commitment to fighting,” said Rogan, “and I worry about where you stand… not your commitment to training, not your commitment to give it your all. I think you have one foot out the door.  I think you’re looking at where the future is going to take you and that you can’t do this forever. I think that’s a very dangerous place to be in fighting.”

When Schaub disagreed with Rogan’s assessment, things only took a turn for the worse…

“You are not an elite fighter. You are predictable. The reality is, I don’t see you beating elite guys. Werdum, Cain is another level than you.”

As if Brendan Schaub‘s first round TKO loss at the hands of Travis Browne last weekend wasn’t bad enough, the verbal shellacking he received on The Joe Rogan Experience last night might’ve been even more devastating.

Sitting in with The Fighter and the Kid co-host Bryan Callen, Schaub tried to explain what went wrong against Browne at UFC 181, and when his words fell short, the always honest Rogan stepped in to dole out some brutally honest advice for a guy he considers his friend, all but demanding that he retire from the sport before he receives anymore brain damage.

“This is the reality of it: I worry about your commitment to fighting,” said Rogan, “and I worry about where you stand… not your commitment to training, not your commitment to give it your all. I think you have one foot out the door.  I think you’re looking at where the future is going to take you and that you can’t do this forever. I think that’s a very dangerous place to be in fighting.”

When Schaub disagreed with Rogan’s assessment, things only took a turn for the worse…

The reality of your skill-set and where you’re at now, I don’t see you beating the elite guys. I don’t see you beating Cain Velasquez, I don’t see you beating Junior dos Santos, I don’t see you beating Fabricio Werdum.

You came into fighting fairly late in life. You’re a good athlete, you’re a strong guy, you’re a big guy and you can do a lot of things because of that. You’re very dedicated and you’re very disciplined and you get s**t done. But there’s a reality of fluidity, of movement, of mechanical efficiency of movement that happens when you get a guy who’s trained his whole life at a certain aspect of MMA; whether it’s wrestling, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu… there’s a fluidity to their movement that you don’t really have. It’s not that you don’t try hard, it’s not that you’re not dedicated, it’s not that you’re not disciplined, it’s not that you’re not intelligent. There’s s**t that other people can do that you can’t do.

As I’m watching that fight there’s a lot of things that concern me. You were lunging with your punches instead of getting there with your footwork and then launching things from the proper distance. You were reaching and loading up, you looked very stiff, you didn’t look fluid. It didn’t look good, it’s didn’t look like you were well-prepared. Your movement just didn’t look like an elite fighter’s movement. 

Rogan then asked Schaub how he think he would fair against Cain Velasquez in a straight up wrestling match.

“I think people would be surprised,” answered Schaub.

“Really? You think so?” answered Rogan. “I think you’d be surprised. I really do. I think he’d fuck you up, and I say that as a friend and a guy who loves you.”

Rogan further criticized “Big Brown’s” performance against Andrei Arlovski, stating that Schaub “couldn’t pull the trigger” and that his “attacks were really obvious.”

It may seem like a harsh and downright spiteful thing to say to a friend on a live show, but the reality is that Rogan said what he said out of an earnest concern for Schaub’s health. The TUF 10 runner-up has suffered 4 (T)KO losses in the octagon, some more particularly vicious than others, and who knows how much more damage in training. He is on a two-fight losing streak and has never beat a top 10 ranked fighter in his division. The end of the road is rapidly approaching for Schaub, young as he may seem, and it’s no longer a question of whether or not he can become a champion (he cannot), but rather how much damage he is willing to take in his attempt to achieve that impossible dream.

“The reality of brain damage is that it doesn’t heal” Rogan continued. “It was very hard for me to stop fighting, but I stopped fighting when I was 21, and one of the reasons why I stopped fighting when I was 21 was because I was starting to get headaches, man. I was starting to get headaches and I know I did some damage to my head; I know I did”

Schaub remained silent for the most part, only attempting to defend his need to continue fighting for the most basic of reasons: Money.

Joe, I think it’s easy for you to sit there, with whatever, $12 million in the bank and say, ‘Oh, you need to stop doing this.’ It’s easier when you’re set and you don’t come from that background and you’re going home to your wife and kid in your f***ing $6 million mansion. It’s like, ‘Bro, you shouldn’t fight. Brain trauma. It’s bad.’ ‘OK, I’ll just stop doing it. I’ll just do a podcast for the next 40 years.

When Schaub declared that he would fight again “100 percent,” Rogan somberly questioned how long he would continue commentating due to the internal conflict of watching people he considers friends suffer repeated head damage. Friends like Schaub.

“If you fight again, I might just take the day off.”

–J. Jones