Very rarely does a fight come together via honest divisional math that has as much heat and validity as Jon Jones versus Daniel Cormier. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been some very lucrative bad-blood matches in the UFC to date. The company delivered the first bout between Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz way […]
Very rarely does a fight come together via honest divisional math that has as much heat and validity as Jon Jones versus Daniel Cormier. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been some very lucrative bad-blood matches in the UFC to date. The company delivered the first bout between Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz way […]
For even top-flight mixed martial artists, the overwhelming anxiety that accompanies a typical walk to a ring, cage or Octagon can prove mortifying. Over the course of the sport’s history, however, a handful of ballsy and imaginative figures have emerged to transform the sometimes daunting pre-fight ritual into a captivating spectacle. These men have emulated […]
For even top-flight mixed martial artists, the overwhelming anxiety that accompanies a typical walk to a ring, cage or Octagon can prove mortifying. Over the course of the sport’s history, however, a handful of ballsy and imaginative figures have emerged to transform the sometimes daunting pre-fight ritual into a captivating spectacle. These men have emulated […]
As if Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier, Dominick Cruz, Tim Kennedy and Cat Zingano weren’t enough reasons to tune into UFC 178 on Sept. 27, the two fighters in the main event just gave you one more:
But the MGM Grand Hotel lob…
As if Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier, Dominick Cruz, Tim Kennedy and Cat Zingano weren’t enough reasons to tune into UFC 178 on Sept. 27, the two fighters in the main event just gave you one more:
But the MGM Grand Hotel lobby wasn’t home to the first confrontational moment these two men have shared—it was just home to the first physical one. Long before the challenger put his hands on the champion’s throat or Jones threw punches at a downed Cormier, they participated in what can easily be considered as one of the best war of words in MMA history.
Let your eyes guide you through the highlights.
Cormier’s UFC 173 Post-Fight Interview
Though Cormier and Jones may have shared harsher words about each other prior to Cormier’s dominant performance against Dan Henderson, they meant almost nothing up until this point. After two one-sided victories as a light heavyweight, the matchup against Jones the former Olympian had long since dreamed of was closer than ever at coming to fruition.
Considering Alexander Gustafsson was next in line for a title shot against the reigning pound-for-pound king, Cormier was poised to surgically repair his bothersome knee while he waited around for his next opponent to surface from a crowded light heavyweight division.
As fate would have it, Gustafsson would develop a bothersome knee of his own, effectively preventing the Swedish fighter from challenging for the title and opening the door for Cormier to step in.
Jones Reaches Out to His Daughter
According to Dana White, the UFC president could overhear Cormier’s daughter shouting in the background during the phone call to offer Cormier the fight. She was sure her dad would be the champion of the world.
Soon after both men agreed to step into the cage together, Jones took to a daughter of his own to let Cormier know how confident the champion and his family were about where the strap would reside on Sept. 28.
Cormier Gets Creative on Instagram, Jones Responds
Cormier edited a picture, superimposing himself onto a photo of what is likely the champion’s fight against Gustafsson at UFC 165. He posted the photo in response to Jones’ decision to publicize a cut he developed during a sparring session in preparation for his next title defense. He captioned the photo with this:
September 27th I’m gonna put so many of these on [your] face @jonnybones. I can’t wait everyday I’m dreaming and thinking of you. And I’m gonna take [you] down and grind my elbow into that cut you got today. Put a bullseye on that thing. Some things should remain private. DC
Just hours later, the champion took to the same social media platform to share his sentiments on why his newest challenger is anything but. After facing challengers like Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Lyoto Machida, Rampage Jackson, Rashad Evans, Vitor Belfort and Glover Teixeira, Jones doesn’t think the Olympic wrestler has anything new to offer.
The Aftermath of the Infamous Brawl
Here we are. The war of words suddenly became something completely different. As if it wasn’t obvious before, the animosity is real—these dudes really, really don’t like each other.
Able to back up what he said he’d be able to accomplish against his Olympic-level challenger, Jones signed into his Twitter account to gloat over his accomplishments in the brief scuffle.
Cormier couldn’t let Jones have the last word.
With Nevada State Athletic Commission sanctions pending, here’s hoping this war reverts back to its verbal origins. If there is any more physicality without leather gloves on their hands and a referee within close proximity, this could be the most anticipated fight that never happens.
Kristian Ibarra is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report. He also serves as the sports editor at San Diego State University’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Aztec. Follow him on Twitter at @Kristian_Ibarra for all things MMA.
Imagine you are a mixed martial artist.
You work every day with one goal in mind: the UFC Octagon. You belong there. You sense it. Every step you take, every bite of food you ingest, is done with the UFC in mind.
You’re invited to participa…
Imagine you are a mixed martial artist.
You work every day with one goal in mind: the UFC Octagon. You belong there. You sense it. Every step you take, every bite of food you ingest, is done with the UFC in mind.
You’re invited to participate on The Ultimate Fighter.
Congratulations.
It’s not quite the UFC, but it’s close. If you’re really the trained beast you claim to be, you’ll be in the UFC soon enough.
Now imagine you went to tryouts, made the cut and received a fight to get into the TUF house. Your dream is coming true.
It’s worth nothing, by the way, that you tried out for the show just three days after after a five-round, championship war at a local NAAFSevent against an opponent, John Hawk, who had previously beaten you. You took him to a decision this time, and your hand was raised. You defied the odds and the pain, and now you’re moving closer to your ultimate goal.
In the fight-in fight to earn a spot in the house, you dominate your opponent. You smash him with punches. You rock him. You take him down at will.
And just as you secure your favorite position, the spot where you are at your best, your knee explodes.
This isn’t just a story to cause you agony and distress—this actually happened to 29-year-old Ohio-based light heavyweight Josh Stansbury during Season 19 of the UFC’s hit reality TV show.
Taking on Irishman Chris Fields in his fight to get into the house, Stansbury experienced huge success, battering his foe with heavy shots and completely controlling the action inside the cage. He knew he belonged inside the legendary, eight-sided cage and he was on the verge of realizing his lifelong dream.
That all changed when his knee gave out when passing to side control—his favorite position—forcing him to concede victory and bow out of the competition.
“When I take someone down and get on the side, I feel like I can hold anybody down,” Stansbury told Bleacher Report. “When I took him down, it was like, ‘Yeah!’ you know? It was like, ‘Yes, here I am, I’m getting ready to get off on him!’ and it just, when I went to push off my leg to pass to the other side, it felt like it (my knee) popped out for a second.”
The opportunity of a lifetime vanished, and instead of entering the field of combatants for Season 19 of The Ultimate Fighter, Stansbury was admitted to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), where Dr. Albert Lin took care of his knee and got him ready to start training again in short order.
Thankfully for Stansbury, the UFC covered all costs of the surgery, and Lin and the surgery team did an excellent job, making the 5-2 light heavyweight stronger than ever after correcting a bucket handle tear in his meniscus.
Still, “what could have been” eats at Stansbury as he watches the 19th season play out.
“You finally feel like you’re there, and it wasn’t just the fact that I was there. I felt like I could compete. I felt like I could’ve won that thing, and I’m telling myself that in my head,” Stansbury said. “I take this guy down, everything’s going my way, and then: Boom! I go to post on my leg, and that happens, something so freak like that. It’s just crazy. I wasn’t beaten up. Wow. How can I…It was unbelievable to me.”
Stansbury previously ran into trouble with his knee in high school as a wrestler, tearing his meniscus on senior night just before the state sectional tournaments. Since he was ranked fourth in the state that year going into the tourney, Stansbury elected for a quick cortisone shot to get him through before receiving a scope shortly after, in 2003.
This, however, did not fully fix the problem, and the injury reared its head at the most inopportune time, leaving him without a spot in the TUFhouse and without a chance at a slot on the UFC’s roster.
On top of this, Stansbury’s fate on the show was sworn to secrecy, and he could not tell anybody from his hometown what happened, something he found incredibly difficult upon coming home.
“Everything happens for a reason, but at the same time, when I came home, that’s when I found it to be the toughest. You have friends and family coming up, saying, ‘Hey, I upgraded my cable just so I could watch!'” Stansbury said. “And I’m just like, ‘Man, you might want to wait until after the first show!’ But I couldn’t really say that. I didn’t want to hype myself and create all this false hype, you know? So I just told them they had to tune in and just try to sell that first show.”
Making all this even more difficult to stomach, Stansbury’s dream and his journey on The Ultimate Fighter truly could have been something special for the Ohio-based fighter, for the UFC and for the fans. Going into the competition, Stansbury had already fought current show front-runner in the 205-pound division Dan Spohn twice in his career, splitting the matchups via guillotine choke. While Spohn tapped Stansbury in his second pro fight, “The Sandman” fired back at Bellator 71, catching his foe with the same move after landing a heavy punch early in Round 1.
Now, the rubber match between the two Ohioans will not happen in the finale as Stansbury expected it would, and he has come to realize this is just another lost opportunity. Add in the lack of fireworks from the current cast of fighters, and the entire situation is a burden that becomes heavier with each passing episode.
“To be honest, when the show first came out, it didn’t bother me as much,” Stansbury said. “I watched Spohn fight and stuff, but it’s at the point now where the last couple shows, the light heavyweight fights have kind of been boring, and it’s just like…it’s bugging me. It eats at me. I feel like I belong in there. I felt like, in my fight, I was in control.”
And that whole “boring” element of this season’s fights? Stansbury thinks he could’ve changed that, too, and he’d have emerged as the show’s “man to beat” by now if his knee had complied.
“I truly believe that if I was there, I’d be the front-runner right now,” Stansbury said. “With my striking style and my wrestling background…And I can box, man. I’m gonna touch these guys, and I have punching power, you know? I feel like I could’ve changed that (the ratings and perception of the show). My definition of finishing a fight is not going out and laying on somebody and being safe. My definition of being safe is going out and trying to knock them out, not take them down and lay on them. It’s just different. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise; they’re not getting good ratings and getting some backlash, so maybe everything happens for a reason.”
Now, Stansbury has moved on, training at Fight Club Pittsburgh, his home base of Team Impact in East Liverpool, Ohio, and the esteemed American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida.
At American Top Team, Stansbury said the training is “leaps and bounds” ahead of anything he can receive locally, and he enjoyed his time sparring and training alongside killers like former Olympic wrestler Steve Mocco (whom Stansbury described wrestling with like grappling a bear) and UFC heavyweight Todd Duffee.
Now, the next step for him is obvious, and it’s one he eagerly anticipates.
The UFC needs to call. In his mind, he deserves a second chance. He’s absolutely at the level of the light heavyweight fighters currently on TUF, and he needs his chance to definitely prove this fact.
“If The Ultimate Fighter did anything for me, it boosted my confidence. It kind of made me believe that I belong there in the UFC,” Stansbury said. “As of right now, I have nothing. When I was leaving The Ultimate Fighter, it was all positive. I still haven’t heard anything negative, it’s just basically unknown right now.”
The positive vibes Stansbury mentioned came from producers of the show and from Frankie Edgar’s coach, current World Series of Fighting bantamweight champion Marlon Moraes. Stansbury said Moraes helped him warm up for his entry fight against Fields, and the 135-pound Brazilian made it a point to see Stansbury after the fight and tell him he belonged in the big show.
“Marlon Moraes, he was like, ‘Man, you’re really good. They’ll bring you back,'” Stansbury said. “I left there really confident that they were gonna bring me back. I’m still confident that they are. I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, but I hope I did enough that they’d consider bringing me back.”
For now, Stansbury uses Season 19 coach Frankie Edgar as inspiration for his return to the Octagon. Edgar famously missed the cut to make it into the The Ultimate Fighter house for Season 5, and he later went on to become a UFC champion.
While Stansbury is not putting himself at the UFC championship level just yet, he feels the potential is there, and he feels he belongs; he just needs the chance to showcase his worth and fight a full fight with two functional knees to prove it.
“I feel like once I get in there and I actually get to fight and prove myself, I feel like I fit in with the UFC,” Stansbury said. “You always dream of it. Any fighter, I don’t care who you are, even if you’ve had one amateur fight or if you’re a veteran, your dream is to make it to the UFC.”
It’s 1985.
Wham! is the hottest thing in music, and movies like The Breakfast Club and The Goonies are reinventing the “random kids come of age, often while wearing awesome ’80s clothes” genre.
The jungles of Brazil are home to no-holds-barred combat, …
It’s 1985.
Wham! is the hottest thing in music, and movies like The Breakfast Club and The Goonies are reinventing the “random kids come of age, often while wearing awesome ’80s clothes” genre.
The jungles of Brazil are home to no-holds-barred combat, but America knows nothing of it aside from what they see outside the bar on a Saturday night.
And Scott Coker just founded Strikeforce.
It’s a kickboxing promotion, a modest West Coast thrill for martial arts fans to be run by Coker, an experienced martial artist himself. He’s known regionally, but the idea that he’d be a global force then, or even within the next two decades, is far away and not particularly feasible.
In a combat sports world dominated by Mike Tyson’s growing legacy, Strikeforce is simply a fun alternative in a sunny corner of the world.
Fast forward that two decades, though, and the world is a very different place.
Kickboxing is as niche as niche can be in the sporting world, Tyson’s legacy is one marred as much by antics out of the ring as any within it (plus a wonderful redemption story), and combat sports looks nothing like one would have anticipated in the 1980s.
Boxing is largely in doldrums, and for a little over a decade, mixed martial arts has been literally and figuratively fighting to become recognized across the country.
The UFC, originally conceived by a Brazilian family who became famous for fighting in their home country, has been everything from a cultural phenomenon to a ruthlessly targeted political chess piece. It’s now running a reality show as a last gasp of air on the sporting landscape.
Coker is still in California, 20 years of fight promotion behind him and time spent on various boards and governing bodies as well. He’s even appeared in a few movies thanks to his combat experience.
Martial arts has been good to him.
But as he sees the UFC growing, sees its reality show quickly changing the climate and forcing the ultimate martial arts proving ground to the cultural forefront, the wheels begin to turn.
His home state is close to regulating MMA, either this year or by 2006, and he’s thinking there might be room for Strikeforce to get in on the new wave early. It’s an itch he’s considered scratching since as early as 2001, but now is truly the time.
There’s so much talent in the Bay Area, so many kickboxers and wrestlers and big personalities with serious athletic pedigrees floating around, that he might just be able to do something special.
And he’s already plugged into them all. It’s his scene.
Scott Coker is going to put on an MMA show.
2006 arrives, and with it comes regulated mixed martial arts in California. Coker is determined to be the first man to promote the sport in the state and, with a little help from his friends at the athletic commission, books Frank Shamrock to fight Cesar Gracie on March 10.
It’s an epic success, with Shamrock stopping Gracie early in the first round in front a salivating, sold-out crowd at the HP Pavilion in San Jose.
Strikeforce is dead. Long live Strikeforce.
The coming years see the former kickboxing promotion grow first into the preeminent regional MMA promotion in America, then into a legitimate national threat to the UFC (which has also exploded after its reality show gambit) thanks to a deal with Showtime Sports.
The promotion creates stars like Gilbert Melendez and Josh Thomson and poaches others like Alistair Overeem and FedorEmelianenko. They even put on the first truly massive fight in the history of women’s MMA, one that sees Gina Carano take a licking from Cyborg Justino (then Cyborg Santos).
Fans come to know and love the signature red, black and white. They know they’re going to get their money’s worth when they tune in.
Then, on an otherwise random night in March 2011 as the cool set in on the Nevada desert, Strikeforce as they know it is gone. Coker‘s vision is gone.
UFC president Dana White appears with the inimitable Ariel Helwani at his office in Las Vegas, humbly announcing his company’s acquisition of Strikeforce while sitting on a couch in a T-shirt.
Hardly the pomp and circumstance one would have expected from a merger many fans thought impossible even hours earlier.
Though “business as usual” is the phrase thrown around regularly and Strikeforce hangs around for nearly two years, it’s clear that business is quite unusual.
Coker is a sallow, sunken puppet. His quiet charm, a signature that made him the most powerful man in California martial arts, is muted. He’s toeing the company line and serving as the figurehead for his promotion, but the writing is on the wall.
Strikeforce died for real on January 12, 2013. Its final resting place is the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, where around 15,000 mourners could come to pay their final respects.
For the interest the event garners, it might as well be 15.
The road from that night to June 18, 2014 is a quiet one for Scott Coker. Part of the deal that saw Strikeforce absorbed into the UFC saw Coker make his way to the front office there, but he’s hardly ever heard from.
It seems an incredible waste of talent for a promotion bent on expanding globally to bury one of the best promoters in martial arts history in some mystery cubicle, but that’s what happens.
During that time a new contender emerges, one that was a seedling when Coker‘s Strikeforce was growing into a mighty tree on the sport’s landscape. Bellator MMA, a tournament-based concept from former boxing promoter Bjorn Rebney, has become pretty good at what it does and earned the financial backing of media giant Viacom for its efforts.
Except Viacom doesn’t much care for Rebney or his fixation on tournaments crowning contenders while champions sit on the sidelines and wait for them.
They want the property, not necessarily the man who conceived of it.
And so, after nearly three years of trying to run it with Rebney at the helm, they axe him. There’s a vacancy at the top, and it comes right after the promotion ran its first pay-per-view in relatively successful fashion.
They have big names on the roster like Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler, and full-on crossover stars like Tito Ortiz and Rampage Jackson. There’s a foundation to work with there, progress to be made for a man who knows how to make it.
Scott Coker is a man who knows how to make it.
He’s been making it some way or another for nearly 30 years.
That fact isn’t lost on Viacom. Since he’s free to leave the UFC offices thanks to the expiration of a non-compete clause, they get him on the horn.
Vacancy filled.
So June 18, 2014 is the day.
That’s the day that Scott Coker‘s journey in martial arts begins anew. He’s announced as the new head of Bellator MMA and immediately gets back to what made he and his previous work so great.
He speaks of “Bellator 2.0” and how things will look a little different than they have. He deflects any line of questioning that could start a conflict in the media, instead opting for a quiet calm and a smooth confidence.
This is a guy who started in the game listening to Wham! and watching The Breakfast Club and hasn’t spoken much above a whisper since. And he’s been a success.
Can he be again? Only time will tell.
But it’s clear that, based on his career, a bet on Scott Coker is a pretty safe one.
For more on Scott Coker and the incredible rise and fall of Strikeforce, check out Bleacher Report’s own Jonathan Snowden’s oral history of the promotion: Part 1 and Part 2.
When Pride Fighting Championships was an active organization, their rules for fighting on the ground were a little different than the Unified Rules that we know today. In Pride, fighters were able to use kicks and knees to grounded opponents. That changes the dynamic of the ground game and submissions. Positions like side control and […]
When Pride Fighting Championships was an active organization, their rules for fighting on the ground were a little different than the Unified Rules that we know today. In Pride, fighters were able to use kicks and knees to grounded opponents. That changes the dynamic of the ground game and submissions. Positions like side control and […]
As if