That win would represent Barao’s first defense of his brand-new unified title. Meanwhile, Jon Jones has defended his light-heavyweight belt six times so far, a tally that includes wins against four former LHW champs. But for the purposes of desperately hyping up a mid-level pay-per-view that could end up competing with the Super Bowl, we’ll just pretend that Jones doesn’t exist.
“[If Weidman beats Belfort] he’s the best. He’s No. 1. How is he not No. 1 pound-for-pound in the world if he beats Vitor Belfort?” White exclaimed. “It’s impossible not to call him the No. 1 pound-for-pound guy.”
You hear that? IMPOSSIBLE! Don’t even try it, ya dummy! When a reporter pointed out that White recently made the same proclamation about Renan Barao, White made a very cogent argument in support of his new stance. Just kidding:
That win would represent Barao’s first defense of his brand-new unified title. Meanwhile, Jon Jones has defended his light-heavyweight belt six times so far, a tally that includes wins against four former LHW champs. But for the purposes of desperately hyping up a mid-level pay-per-view that could end up competing with the Super Bowl, we’ll just pretend that Jones doesn’t exist.
“[If Weidman beats Belfort] he’s the best. He’s No. 1. How is he not No. 1 pound-for-pound in the world if he beats Vitor Belfort?” White exclaimed. “It’s impossible not to call him the No. 1 pound-for-pound guy.”
You hear that? IMPOSSIBLE! Don’t even try it, ya dummy! When a reporter pointed out that White recently made the same proclamation about Renan Barao, White made a very cogent argument in support of his new stance. Just kidding:
You hear that? You’re DOGSHIT, Barao! The potential coronation of Chris Weidman as New P4P King is ridiculous for the same reasons that White’s hype of Barao was ridiculous: 1) Jon Jones still exists, you guys, and 2) What exactly would Weidman prove by beating Belfort, that he hasn’t already proven with his two wins against the greatest MMA fighter who ever lived? And don’t forget, if Belfort’s application for a TRT exemption is rejected, Weidman will be beating up on an old, sick man who lacks fully-functioning testicles due to previous steroid abuse. That doesn’t even seem fair.
So I guess this is what we’re doing from now on, huh? If Ronda Rousey whoops Sara McMann next month, she’s the #1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world? And if Jones beats Teixeira in April (if!), maybe he’ll reclaim his rightful spot at the top? The stakes are high, people! Buy the pay-per-view today, drink your Ovaltine, and watch the money card at all times…
Everyone has a vague idea of how three-card Monte works: a street hustler places three cards face-down. A mark is enticed into finding the money card. Using misdirection, subterfuge and distraction, the hustler dupes the mark into picking the wrong card over and over. Sometimes a “shill” aids the hustler by playing the game and making it appear winnable.
The fight game is a similar hustle where many MMA journalists often play the role of the shill. Rather than being independent, certain MMA outlets and journalists are working in concert with the promoter to achieve a specific aim. Often, the promoter is buying publicity for their product, which is fair game considering that running an MMA promotion is a brutal marketplace where only the fittest survive.
It’s critical for an event promoter to spend money on the front end — including giving incentives to journalists — so that they can make money on the back end. Sports leagues require massive amounts of capital, as well as leaders capable of executing a clear vision; save for the spectacular Japanese league PRIDE FC that was backed by the yakuza and their dirty money, no one has done a better job of running an MMA promotion than casino magnates Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, the majority owners of the UFC.
If the mark happens to be the casual fan being steered into buying an MMA card, so be it. Colonel Tom Parker might have paid girls to scream at Elvis’s early shows, but his product held up to scrutiny over time. No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to buy watered down PPV’s or watch lackluster cards.
On the other end, when the mark happens to be the fighters, it’s a much more serious issue. Successful promotions earn tremendous amounts of revenue from pay-per-view buys, television licensing, live gate, merchandise, and other streams. MMA fighters who don’t know or understand their value will continue to be taken for a ride.
(Look closely, and you can actually see suckers being born every minute. / Photo via Getty / For previous installments of Shill Em’ All, click here.)
Everyone has a vague idea of how three-card Monte works: a street hustler places three cards face-down. A mark is enticed into finding the money card. Using misdirection, subterfuge and distraction, the hustler dupes the mark into picking the wrong card over and over. Sometimes a “shill” aids the hustler by playing the game and making it appear winnable.
The fight game is a similar hustle where many MMA journalists often play the role of the shill. Rather than being independent, certain MMA outlets and journalists are working in concert with the promoter to achieve a specific aim. Often, the promoter is buying publicity for their product, which is fair game considering that running an MMA promotion is a brutal marketplace where only the fittest survive.
It’s critical for an event promoter to spend money on the front end — including giving incentives to journalists — so that they can make money on the back end. Sports leagues require massive amounts of capital, as well as leaders capable of executing a clear vision; save for the spectacular Japanese league PRIDE FC that was backed by the yakuza and their dirty money, no one has done a better job of running an MMA promotion than casino magnates Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, the majority owners of the UFC.
If the mark happens to be the casual fan being steered into buying an MMA card, so be it. Colonel Tom Parker might have paid girls to scream at Elvis’s early shows, but his product held up to scrutiny over time. No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to buy watered down PPV’s or watch lackluster cards.
On the other end, when the mark happens to be the fighters, it’s a much more serious issue. Successful promotions earn tremendous amounts of revenue from pay-per-view buys, television licensing, live gate, merchandise, and other streams. MMA fighters who don’t know or understand their value will continue to be taken for a ride.
The number one negotiable expense promoters have is the fighter payroll. For instance, when Floyd Mayweather Jr. faced Victor Ortiz in 2011, his paycheck was estimated at around $40 million dollars; as the promoter, he graciously paid Ortiz, the B-side of the main event, $2 million. In the shell game of MMA journalism, media shills have a critical role in ignoring the most basic question — not merely what fighter pay is, but rather, what is fighter pay in relation to a promotion’s net revenue?
(All sports journalism, pretty much.)
It’s easy for a journalist to write an article that relays the sanitized version of news sanctioned by the promotion. All it involves is cutting and pasting the disclosed payouts from athletic commissions, parroting the party line about how stringently fighters are drug tested in MMA, and participating in the circular argument about how to make the useless UFC rankings work better. As professor of cultural research at the University of Western Sydney David Rowe noted, sports journalists in general are more like a fan club that panders to popular opinion without digging too deep into investigative reporting.
MMA promoters aren’t exclusive in their attempts to control the media, either. The NFL’s Washington Redskins recently attracted negative attention for giving media outlets partnered with the team preferential access. According to an insightful piece in the Washington Post, the Redskins collect seven-figure annual fees from media partners NBC4 and CSN. As could be expected, the Redskins media partners gave the boilerplate statement that they would never compromise their reporting.
The unsubstantiated rumor that incited our entire Shill ‘Em All series was a post on Reddit that claimed the UFC was directly paying expenses for MMAJunkie.com in exchange for favorable coverage of the UFC in USA Today. While I never found a smoking gun tying the UFC to USA Today/MMAJunkie like Tim Marchman of Deadspin.com did to tie VICE’s Fightland section to the UFC, I did talk to many high-level MMA reporters and editors who tipped me off to simpler, more obvious connections between the UFC and favorable relationships with certain media outlets — ads.
All a fight promotion would need to do is have one of its major sponsors place ads in a publication in exchange for favorable coverage of the promotion. Consider why a major brand and UFC sponsor like Harley Davidson would advertise with MMAJunkie — or even more blatantly obvious, the UFC-sponsored content on MMAJunkie.
Probing these issues and trying to learn more about the “USA Today UFC Group” that does the ads for UFC.com has been a challenging experience. MMAJunkie editor-in-chief Dann Stupp would not respond for comment. MMAJunkie reporter John Morgan referred me to Mary Byrne, the managing editor of USA Today’s sports section. Byrne gave the boilerplate denial that the UFC had any editorial pull with USA Today/MMAJunkie and referred me to senior vice president of USA Today Leagues and Properties Merrill Squires to answer questions about the “USA Today UFC Group.” Squires has been unresponsive to queries so far.
(UFC.com, “Part of the USA Today UFC Group.”)
MMA journalism isn’t getting any easier to do. At the end of 2013, ESPN.com released reporters Josh Gross and Franklin McNeil. The bright spot counterbalancing this decline in MMA coverage is that FoxSports.com brought Mike Chiappetta, Marc Raimondi and Damon Martin aboard. The UFC deal with FOX gives the television network clear incentive to promote MMA through all of its properties, but it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see news coverage like ESPN’s Outside the Lines segment on UFC fighter pay from FOX or FoxSports.com.
Suppressing the truth still is a taxing game of whack-a-mole that the promoter can’t completely win, and the MMA media will get scooped time and time again by more impartial outlets. Recent statements from Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva illuminate a different truth from what the promoter is selling. St-Pierre’s controversial comments about insufficient drug-testing and the UFC being a monopoly came through a Quebec publication and were translated from his native French; Anderson’s comments about how he asks his wife to drive him around Los Angeles so he could cry without being seen by his kids were given in Portuguese to Globo.
Many fans, pundits, and industry insiders truly believe that they have the supreme ability to separate fact from fiction and that they are impervious to the machinations of the promoter’s influence. Yet without Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva’s open and honest interviews, we would still have a Pollyanna-view of their respective situations. In a similar vein, without the unveiling of the WWE’s digital network, some MMA fans would not be able to see the flaws and shortcomings of the UFC’s Fight Pass.
As for the promoter, they don’t actually need to convince all of the people all of the time. They simply have to keep the game running, utilize misdirection through their shills, and continue raking in the mark’s money.
Which leads into today’s news that Belfort will indeed be applying for a therapeutic usage exemption for TRT in Nevada when his title fight against Weidman is officially booked. Ariel Helwani passed along the news on last night’s installment of UFC Tonight:
“He said he’s on TRT and that his doctors said he has to be on it. This has been prescribed and he’s planning on applying to be on a TUE for the next fight.”
Well, bullshit. For the sake of argument, let’s take Belfort at his word — he needs to load up on testosterone in order to function normally. Is that a valid reason for any athletic commission to grant him an exemption? You’re gonna let a guy use steroids because he’s too sick to compete without them? Honestly, that sounds like the worst reason to give a professional fighter a TUE. But hey, we all know that in Brazil, doctors are essentially Gods and their advice must be followed at all costs, no matter how ridiculous.
Which leads into today’s news that Belfort will indeed be applying for a therapeutic usage exemption for TRT in Nevada when his title fight against Weidman is officially booked. Ariel Helwani passed along the news on last night’s installment of UFC Tonight:
“He said he’s on TRT and that his doctors said he has to be on it. This has been prescribed and he’s planning on applying to be on a TUE for the next fight.”
Well, bullshit. For the sake of argument, let’s take Belfort at his word — he needs to load up on testosterone in order to function normally. Is that a valid reason for any athletic commission to grant him an exemption? You’re gonna let a guy use steroids because he’s too sick to compete without them? Honestly, that sounds like the worst reason to give a professional fighter a TUE. But hey, we all know that in Brazil, doctors are essentially Gods and their advice must be followed at all costs, no matter how ridiculous.
For Belfort, testosterone therapy may be a performance-enabler rather than a performance-enhancer, but that doesn’t make his usage any more legitimate. I’m reminded of Karo Parisyan’s dependency on painkillers during the late part of his UFC run, which earned him a suspension and a fine following his appearance at UFC 94 in 2009. In Parisyan’s case, the drugs didn’t give him superhuman strength, but he’d be a physical and emotional wreck if he had to fight without them. That’s why painkillers generally fall under MMA’s unapproved substances list; theoretically, the UFC only wants healthy fighters competing.
In other words, “this treatment isn’t a performance enhancer, it just allows me to compete” shouldn’t hold water as a medical justification. Belfort allegedly suffers from an illness that would prevent him from being competitive with the UFC’s elite middleweights without the help of TRT. Really, he’s a very sick man. That’s the story he’s sticking to, anyway. And this is the guy who’s getting the next middleweight title shot in the UFC.
One unfortunate aspect of MMA is that far too many fighters continue to compete long after they should have hung up the gloves. It’s hard to watch once-great athletes tarnish their legacies and put themselves at risk for dementia pugilistica. That’s why it’s so refreshing when fighters decide to retire at the right time. Even rarer are the ones who taste success just once before walking away. Here’s our tribute to a few legendary fighters who were literally one-and-done.
Rulon Gardner has faced more hardship throughout his life than most men could ever survive. As a kid, he was punctured in the abdomen by an arrow during show-and-tell at school. As an adult, Gardner survived crashing into a freezing river in his snowmobile after getting lost; he wasn’t rescued until almost two days later, by which point he had suffered hypothermia that would later cost him a toe. Gardner also survived a motorcycle crash and a small plane crash that plunged him into Lake Powell, Utah, and forced him to swim for an hour in order to reach safety.
Despite these tremendous survival stories which could earn any man a made-for-TV movie, Gardner is best known for wrestling the most dangerous man to ever don a wrestling singlet. In one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Gardner defeated Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. What made the upset so incredible was that Karelin, the three-time defending gold medalist, was undefeated for 13 years going into the match. Hell, Karelin hadn’t even given up a single point in six years. Yet somehow, Gardner, a pudgy farm boy from Wyoming, managed to shut down Karelin’s offense, making him an unlikely Olympic Gold Medalist.
After winning Bronze four years later at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Gardner left his wrestling shoes on the mat in a symbolic gesture of retirement. However, the competitive urge persisted and Gardner was convinced to compete in an MMA match at Pride Shockwave 2004. His opponent in that classic freak-fight was Hidehiko Yoshida, a judoka and a fellow Olympic gold medalist. Yoshida was a serious submission threat who entered the fight coming off a win over Mark Hunt and a draw against Royce Gracie. However, Gardner had been training with Bas Rutten which paid off, as he managed to win a rather boring unanimous decision victory over Yoshida. Gardner controlled the match and showed that he had a promising combination of raw skills and incredible strength. However, despite his potential as an MMA fighter, Gardner never competed in the sport again. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Gardner admitted that he didn’t have the killer instinct for MMA because he didn’t really enjoy hitting people or getting hit.
One unfortunate aspect of MMA is that far too many fighters continue to compete long after they should have hung up the gloves. It’s hard to watch once-great athletes tarnish their legacies and put themselves at risk for dementia pugilistica. That’s why it’s so refreshing when fighters decide to retire at the right time. Even rarer are the ones who taste success just once before walking away. Here’s our tribute to a few legendary fighters who were literally one-and-done.
Rulon Gardner has faced more hardship throughout his life than most men could ever survive. As a kid, he was punctured in the abdomen by an arrow during show-and-tell at school. As an adult, Gardner survived crashing into a freezing river in his snowmobile after getting lost; he wasn’t rescued until almost two days later, by which point he had suffered hypothermia that would later cost him a toe. Gardner also survived a motorcycle crash and a small plane crash that plunged him into Lake Powell, Utah, and forced him to swim for an hour in order to reach safety.
Despite these tremendous survival stories which could earn any man a made-for-TV movie, Gardner is best known for wrestling the most dangerous man to ever don a wrestling singlet. In one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Gardner defeated Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. What made the upset so incredible was that Karelin, the three-time defending gold medalist, was undefeated for 13 years going into the match. Hell, Karelin hadn’t even given up a single point in six years. Yet somehow, Gardner, a pudgy farm boy from Wyoming, managed to shut down Karelin’s offense, making him an unlikely Olympic Gold Medalist.
After winning Bronze four years later at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Gardner left his wrestling shoes on the mat in a symbolic gesture of retirement. However, the competitive urge persisted and Gardner was convinced to compete in an MMA match at Pride Shockwave 2004. His opponent in that classic freak-fight was Hidehiko Yoshida, a judoka and a fellow Olympic gold medalist. Yoshida was a serious submission threat who entered the fight coming off a win over Mark Hunt and a draw against Royce Gracie. However, Gardner had been training with Bas Rutten which paid off, as he managed to win a rather boring unanimous decision victory over Yoshida. Gardner controlled the match and showed that he had a promising combination of raw skills and incredible strength. However, despite his potential as an MMA fighter, Gardner never competed in the sport again. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Gardner admitted that he didn’t have the killer instinct for MMA because he didn’t really enjoy hitting people or getting hit.
Pride offered Gardner $1 million to fight Fedor Emelianenko, but Gardner knew he would be outmatched, and the competitor in him refused to enter into anything half-assed. Although it would have been a great payday, it was probably a good decision considering the potential for brain damage.
Time hasn’t been particularly kind to Gardner since his foray into MMA. After ballooning to 474 pounds, Gardner appeared as a contestant on the NBC reality show The Biggest Loser where he quickly became a favorite to win the competition. However, after shedding 174 pounds, Gardner abruptly left the show over his desire to try and earn a third Olympic medal at the London Olympics. He feared that losing too much weight would rid him of too much strength and muscle to wrestle competitively. However, once off the show, Gardner failed to make Olympic weight and that — coupled with his declining abilities — cut short those ambitions. Later in 2012, it was announced that Gardner was in millions of dollars of debt and had filed for bankruptcy. It was an unfortunate development for a man who has given the combat world so much. However, at least he can go to his grave knowing he was an Olympic gold medalist and undefeated MMA fighter. Very few other human beings can make that claim.
Another Olympic wrestling gold medalist to successfully enter MMA for one match is Kenny Monday. At the 1998 Seoul games, Monday won the free-style gold in the 163-pound division against the Soviet Union’s Adlan Varaev. Although Monday was an accomplished wrestler and well-known in American wrestling, he was a newcomer on the world wrestling scene. Varaev was the defending world champion and favorite to win the Olympics. However, the U.S. had a strong legacy of 163-pound champions from which Monday could cull advice and experience; he also possessed the strength, skill and technique to be a serious contender. When Monday met Varaev in the finals, it was an incredibly close match in which Monday came from behind to capture the upset gold in overtime.
Monday continued to have success in international wrestling, winning gold and silver at the World Championships in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He also won a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. When he competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games, he finished sixth. It would be his last international competition.
Less than a year after retiring from wrestling, Monday agreed to fight in an MMA match against John Lewis at Extreme Fighting 4 in Des Moines, Iowa. John Lewis — who later went on to become one of the most high-profile MMA coaches ever and who is credited with first sparking the interest of the Fertitta brothers and Dana White in MMA — was undefeated (2-0-3) at the time he fought Monday. However, Monday handed Lewis his first loss via ground-and-pound near the end of round two after controlling him on the ground for most of the match.
Monday never fought in MMA again because he was too busy as a wrestling coach, but he didn’t completely leave the sport. In early 2013, he accepted a three-year position as wrestling coach for the Blackzilians, the prominent South Florida MMA team that has included such prominent UFC fighters as Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort, and Alistair Overeem. Monday had the raw athletic ability and wrestling pedigree to have lasting success in MMA, but he chose to dedicate himself to coaching. At the time when the prospects for monetary gain were few and far between in the sport, it was probably the right choice for his pocketbook and physical health.
One unfortunate aspect of MMA is that far too many fighters continue to compete long after they should have hung up the gloves. It’s hard to watch once-great athletes tarnish their legacies and put themselves at risk for dementia pugilistica. That’s why it’s so refreshing when fighters decide to retire at the right time. Even rarer are the ones who taste success just once before walking away. Here’s our tribute to a few legendary fighters who were literally one-and-done.
Rulon Gardner has faced more hardship throughout his life than most men could ever survive. As a kid, he was punctured in the abdomen by an arrow during show-and-tell at school. As an adult, Gardner survived crashing into a freezing river in his snowmobile after getting lost; he wasn’t rescued until almost two days later, by which point he had suffered hypothermia that would later cost him a toe. Gardner also survived a motorcycle crash and a small plane crash that plunged him into Lake Powell, Utah, and forced him to swim for an hour in order to reach safety.
Despite these tremendous survival stories which could earn any man a made-for-TV movie, Gardner is best known for wrestling the most dangerous man to ever don a wrestling singlet. In one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Gardner defeated Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. What made the upset so incredible was that Karelin, the three-time defending gold medalist, was undefeated for 13 years going into the match. Hell, Karelin hadn’t even given up a single point in six years. Yet somehow, Gardner, a pudgy farm boy from Wyoming, managed to shut down Karelin’s offense, making him an unlikely Olympic Gold Medalist.
After winning Bronze four years later at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Gardner left his wrestling shoes on the mat in a symbolic gesture of retirement. However, the competitive urge persisted and Gardner was convinced to compete in an MMA match at Pride Shockwave 2004. His opponent in that classic freak-fight was Hidehiko Yoshida, a judoka and a fellow Olympic gold medalist. Yoshida was a serious submission threat who entered the fight coming off a win over Mark Hunt and a draw against Royce Gracie. However, Gardner had been training with Bas Rutten which paid off, as he managed to win a rather boring unanimous decision victory over Yoshida. Gardner controlled the match and showed that he had a promising combination of raw skills and incredible strength. However, despite his potential as an MMA fighter, Gardner never competed in the sport again. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Gardner admitted that he didn’t have the killer instinct for MMA because he didn’t really enjoy hitting people or getting hit.
One unfortunate aspect of MMA is that far too many fighters continue to compete long after they should have hung up the gloves. It’s hard to watch once-great athletes tarnish their legacies and put themselves at risk for dementia pugilistica. That’s why it’s so refreshing when fighters decide to retire at the right time. Even rarer are the ones who taste success just once before walking away. Here’s our tribute to a few legendary fighters who were literally one-and-done.
Rulon Gardner has faced more hardship throughout his life than most men could ever survive. As a kid, he was punctured in the abdomen by an arrow during show-and-tell at school. As an adult, Gardner survived crashing into a freezing river in his snowmobile after getting lost; he wasn’t rescued until almost two days later, by which point he had suffered hypothermia that would later cost him a toe. Gardner also survived a motorcycle crash and a small plane crash that plunged him into Lake Powell, Utah, and forced him to swim for an hour in order to reach safety.
Despite these tremendous survival stories which could earn any man a made-for-TV movie, Gardner is best known for wrestling the most dangerous man to ever don a wrestling singlet. In one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Gardner defeated Aleksandr Karelin in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. What made the upset so incredible was that Karelin, the three-time defending gold medalist, was undefeated for 13 years going into the match. Hell, Karelin hadn’t even given up a single point in six years. Yet somehow, Gardner, a pudgy farm boy from Wyoming, managed to shut down Karelin’s offense, making him an unlikely Olympic Gold Medalist.
After winning Bronze four years later at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Gardner left his wrestling shoes on the mat in a symbolic gesture of retirement. However, the competitive urge persisted and Gardner was convinced to compete in an MMA match at Pride Shockwave 2004. His opponent in that classic freak-fight was Hidehiko Yoshida, a judoka and a fellow Olympic gold medalist. Yoshida was a serious submission threat who entered the fight coming off a win over Mark Hunt and a draw against Royce Gracie. However, Gardner had been training with Bas Rutten which paid off, as he managed to win a rather boring unanimous decision victory over Yoshida. Gardner controlled the match and showed that he had a promising combination of raw skills and incredible strength. However, despite his potential as an MMA fighter, Gardner never competed in the sport again. In an interview with Ariel Helwani, Gardner admitted that he didn’t have the killer instinct for MMA because he didn’t really enjoy hitting people or getting hit.
Pride offered Gardner $1 million to fight Fedor Emelianenko, but Gardner knew he would be outmatched, and the competitor in him refused to enter into anything half-assed. Although it would have been a great payday, it was probably a good decision considering the potential for brain damage.
Time hasn’t been particularly kind to Gardner since his foray into MMA. After ballooning to 474 pounds, Gardner appeared as a contestant on the NBC reality show The Biggest Loser where he quickly became a favorite to win the competition. However, after shedding 174 pounds, Gardner abruptly left the show over his desire to try and earn a third Olympic medal at the London Olympics. He feared that losing too much weight would rid him of too much strength and muscle to wrestle competitively. However, once off the show, Gardner failed to make Olympic weight and that — coupled with his declining abilities — cut short those ambitions. Later in 2012, it was announced that Gardner was in millions of dollars of debt and had filed for bankruptcy. It was an unfortunate development for a man who has given the combat world so much. However, at least he can go to his grave knowing he was an Olympic gold medalist and undefeated MMA fighter. Very few other human beings can make that claim.
Another Olympic wrestling gold medalist to successfully enter MMA for one match is Kenny Monday. At the 1998 Seoul games, Monday won the free-style gold in the 163-pound division against the Soviet Union’s Adlan Varaev. Although Monday was an accomplished wrestler and well-known in American wrestling, he was a newcomer on the world wrestling scene. Varaev was the defending world champion and favorite to win the Olympics. However, the U.S. had a strong legacy of 163-pound champions from which Monday could cull advice and experience; he also possessed the strength, skill and technique to be a serious contender. When Monday met Varaev in the finals, it was an incredibly close match in which Monday came from behind to capture the upset gold in overtime.
Monday continued to have success in international wrestling, winning gold and silver at the World Championships in 1989 and 1991, respectively. He also won a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. When he competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games, he finished sixth. It would be his last international competition.
Less than a year after retiring from wrestling, Monday agreed to fight in an MMA match against John Lewis at Extreme Fighting 4 in Des Moines, Iowa. John Lewis — who later went on to become one of the most high-profile MMA coaches ever and who is credited with first sparking the interest of the Fertitta brothers and Dana White in MMA — was undefeated (2-0-3) at the time he fought Monday. However, Monday handed Lewis his first loss via ground-and-pound near the end of round two after controlling him on the ground for most of the match.
Monday never fought in MMA again because he was too busy as a wrestling coach, but he didn’t completely leave the sport. In early 2013, he accepted a three-year position as wrestling coach for the Blackzilians, the prominent South Florida MMA team that has included such prominent UFC fighters as Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort, and Alistair Overeem. Monday had the raw athletic ability and wrestling pedigree to have lasting success in MMA, but he chose to dedicate himself to coaching. At the time when the prospects for monetary gain were few and far between in the sport, it was probably the right choice for his pocketbook and physical health.
For a long time now, fans have wondered what is on the minds of professional fighters as they watch their peers compete in the cage. Case in point: Josh Thomson watching Diego Sanchez battling with Gilbert Melendez. Of course, fans of the sport know that Thomson and Melendez know each other very well. How could […]
For a long time now, fans have wondered what is on the minds of professional fighters as they watch their peers compete in the cage. Case in point: Josh Thomson watching Diego Sanchez battling with Gilbert Melendez. Of course, fans of the sport know that Thomson and Melendez know each other very well. How could […]
