Although the Kelvin Gastelum vs. Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone fight was pulled from tomorrow night’s UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor mega-event in New York City as a result of the former TUF Champion’s inability to come anywhere close to the 170-pound wei…
Although the Kelvin Gastelum vs. Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone fight was pulled from tomorrow night’s UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor mega-event in New York City as a result of the former TUF Champion’s inability to come anywhere close to the 170-pound weight requirement on Friday morning, a certain “Pitbull” had better fortune.
Longtime UFC veteran and former UFC 170-pound title contender Thiago “Pitbull” Alves also badly missed weight for his scheduled UFC Lightweight debut against Jim Miller, coming up 6.6 pounds short of the required 155 (with one pound allowance) weight-limit, as he tipped the scales at 162.6 pounds this morning. However, the Alves-Miller fight is apparently still a “go” for tomorrow night’s big event.
Alves’ nutritionist, Mike Dolce, issued the following statement to MMAFighting.com via Ariel Helwani regarding the fact that Alves badly missed weight for his scheduled debut fight in the new division:
“Sad to see Thiago suffer like this. Unfortunately, he and his camp chose to take a huge risk and not follow the proven system my team of licensed professionals set up early in his camp. They decided to use an alternate process, not validated through modern science. The Dolce Diet has never had an athlete miss weight. In six years with Thiago, he has always made weight and performed at an elite level. We look forward to seeing him learn from this and continue his world-class career.”
UFC 205: Alvarez vs. McGregor takes place on Saturday, November 12th from the world-famous Madison Square Garden arena in New York City.
Join us here at MMANews.com on 11/12 for live round-by-round results coverage of the entire UFC 205 pay-per-view.
It’s well known by now that former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey will be returning to action to take back her title as she faces current UFC women’s bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes in the main event of UFC 207 later this year. Rousey, who has not fought since losing the title to Holly Holm
It’s well known by now that former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey will be returning to action to take back her title as she faces current UFC women’s bantamweight champ Amanda Nunes in the main event of UFC 207 later this year.
Rousey, who has not fought since losing the title to Holly Holm back at UFC 193 in November of 2015, started getting serious about a comeback in the late summer, according to Mike Dolce.
“She could have fought on the New York card most likely, but that would have been pushing the timeline just a little too much,” Dolce told MMA Junkie. “She decided to give her body a little more time so she can perform at her best.”
Dolce explained that Rousey has been dealing with various injuries for years and they finally caught up with Rousey after her last bout so she decided to take care of them before stepping back inside the world famous octagon.
“She’s been fighting with nagging injuries for years,” he said. “Those injuries have always been there, and it’s been a matter of managing those injuries for training camps – of which last year, she had three fights in nine months on three continents. That doesn’t leave a five-round fighter a lot of time to heal.
“She was able to take the last year or so to really heal up, take care of herself, and get her body back to the world-class form that we all, as a team, wanted to be at. That’s what puts us into this position now. Ronda’s ready to go.”
While many were surprised that Rousey chose her return to be Nunes, Dolce wasn’t one of those people because in his eyes Nunes should be recognized as who she is and that is a world champion.
“I think Amanda is the world champion,” he said. “I do believe Ronda is the best female fighter on the planet. You look at her resume, the athletes she has defeated, are top No. 1 contenders continuously. I think Amanda is the best next to Ronda. But I do think Amanda will be the toughest test of Ronda’s career. I have no doubt that Ronda is up for that test and will be victorious.”
Dolce went out on a branch and said that he is “100 percent” confident that Rousey is recovered from her knockout loss and will be in peak condition for this upcoming title fight.
“Ronda’s last loss, prior to Holm, was in the Olympics, and she was able to battle back and win the bronze, and continue on in her martial arts career to remain undefeated for the better part of a decade,” he said. “That’s the mentality we’re talking about. There’s no backing off with an athlete like Ronda. She’s very rare.”
UFC 207 takes place on December 30th at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Although we still don’t have a date nor an event for Ronda Rousey’s highly anticipated return, we do now have an idea of when it may take place. UFC president Dana White recently confirmed that the previously dominant bantamweight queen will be returning to action sometime next fall, perhaps in November. After suffering a shocking
Although we still don’t have a date nor an event for Ronda Rousey’s highly anticipated return, we do now have an idea of when it may take place.
UFC president Dana White recently confirmed that the previously dominant bantamweight queen will be returning to action sometime next fall, perhaps in November.
After suffering a shocking and brutal knockout loss to Holly Holm at last November’s UFC 193, it’s understandable that Rousey, being the global superstar she is, needed some time away from the spotlight.
Now having spent nearly five months away from the cage, the “Rowdy” one is apparently planning her triumphant return, or as her nutrition coach Mike Dolce put it, her return to ‘world domination’:
“We’re planning Ronda’s comeback and her world domination,” Dolce told MMAJunkie. “That’s really what it’s about. The last loss Ronda suffered was in the 2008 Olympics, where she battled back and won a bronze medal. She has been undefeated since, all the way to November 2015.”
After running a demolition course through everything put in her path, and looking invincible and unbeatable, it was simply jaw dropping to see Rousey put away last at UFC 193.
However, the fight may have clearly pin pointed some drastic holes in her game, holes we had never necessarily seen.
With that being said, Dolce claims that not only Rousey, but her team as well is completely ‘refocused’:
“She’s extremely refocused, and the team is definitely moving forward,” Dolce said. “We’re all rowing in the right direction, and now it’s just a matter of sitting back and waiting for the right time for her to step back in again.”
After her sudden fall from grace, does Rousey have what it takes to recapture the title she’s held for the last few years?
Or, on the flip side, have we seen the end of one of the sport’s most transcendent stars?
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…
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.
I can only imagine what BJ Penn‘s fans were thinking when they saw the gaunt, sickly featherweight version of the former two-division champion trudge to the ring for his “Why God, WHY?!” trilogy fight with Frankie Edgar at the TUF 19 Finale. I mean, I can’t technically say that I’m a fan of Penn or any fighter for that matter, lest it interfere with my fancy journalistic oath (*takes off “Chris Lytle: State Senator” shirt and puffs pipe*), but even I had to admit that overwhelming sadness induced by his performance that night was only outweighed by his breakdown during the evening’s post-fight press conference.
When we learned that Penn had actually brought in renowned dietician Mike Dolce to help him make the cut to 145 lbs, it was even more surprising to see the final product that was his emaciated, just-a-nickel-a-day-to-save-this-boy’s-life frame. Although Penn wouldn’t go into detail at first, he was highly critical of the infamous “Dolce Diet” and more or less alluded that it was a crock of sh*t. Now a month removed from his fight with Edgar, Penn feels that enough time has passed to start pissing in Dolce’s cornflakes, telling BJPenn.com that the $20,000 he paid Dolce for three weeks work was nothing short of charity:
BJPENN.COM: One of the first things he said was that he had no influence in your last training camp. Is that true?
BJ Penn: “He said he had no influence in my camp, but he brought in sparring partners, did my food and diet, and had me do his treadmill, plyometrics, and core routines. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
BJPENN.COM: What was Dolce’s fee for all this?
BJ Penn: “I hadn’t been to 145 (pounds) in 18 years and that cut was intimidating. I wanted to get it right, so we brought in Mike Dolce, and paid him $22,000.00 for 21 days of service. That’s $1000.00 per day plus a $1000.00 tip.”
BJPENN.COM: Dolce said he filled your place with food, pasta, free range beef, all these things including tons of sea salt. In his words, “enough food to feed a family of six”. True?
BJ Penn:“There was no food in the apartment, and he never told me what to eat.
I can only imagine what BJ Penn‘s fans were thinking when they saw the gaunt, sickly featherweight version of the former two-division champion trudge to the ring for his “Why God, WHY?!” trilogy fight with Frankie Edgar at the TUF 19 Finale. I mean, I can’t technically say that I’m a fan of Penn or any fighter for that matter, lest it interfere with my fancy journalistic oath (*takes off “Chris Lytle: State Senator” shirt and puffs pipe*), but even I had to admit that overwhelming sadness induced by his performance that night was only outweighed by his breakdown during the evening’s post-fight press conference.
When we learned that Penn had actually brought in renowned dietician Mike Dolce to help him make the cut to 145 lbs, it was even more surprising to see the final product that was his emaciated, just-a-nickel-a-day-to-save-this-boy’s-life frame. Although Penn wouldn’t go into detail at first, he was highly critical of the infamous “Dolce Diet” and more or less alluded that it was a crock of sh*t. Now a month removed from his fight with Edgar, Penn feels that enough time has passed to start pissing in Dolce’s cornflakes, telling BJPenn.com that the $20,000 he paid Dolce for three weeks work was nothing short of charity:
BJPENN.COM: One of the first things he said was that he had no influence in your last training camp. Is that true?
BJ Penn: “He said he had no influence in my camp, but he brought in sparring partners, did my food and diet, and had me do his treadmill, plyometrics, and core routines. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
BJPENN.COM: What was Dolce’s fee for all this?
BJ Penn: “I hadn’t been to 145 (pounds) in 18 years and that cut was intimidating. I wanted to get it right, so we brought in Mike Dolce, and paid him $22,000.00 for 21 days of service. That’s $1000.00 per day plus a $1000.00 tip.”
BJPENN.COM: Dolce said he filled your place with food, pasta, free range beef, all these things including tons of sea salt. In his words, “enough food to feed a family of six”. True?
BJ Penn: “There was no food in the apartment, and he never told me what to eat.
That’s the first thing I thought after the fight, was that I should have just filled this place with food and not listened to Dolce. But when you pay someone that kind of money, you entrust them to do their job and take that off your hands.”
Oddly enough, Dolce seemed to agree with Penn for the most part (via MMAJunkie):
It was one of the oddest training camps I’ve ever been a part of, and I was there for less than two weeks, physically, in Hawaii,” Dolce said. “I had very little influence. I made some strong suggestions and very strong observations to members of the team about what I saw, what I’m accustomed to and what I think would really benefit him.
The suggestions that I made, I made them officially, and they were accepted but not responded or reacted to. It was just a matter of that’s the direction he chose to go. He’s either going to win and look like a f-cking genius, or he’s going to not win and he’s going to make the oddsmakers look like geniuses.
– A nutritionist who’s best known for spreading nutella on bread and doesn’t even keep any goddamned trail mix in the apartment is not worth $1,000/day.
– A fighter who’s infamous for his lack of motivation (Penn) and another fighter who has turned on everybody he’s ever worked with (‘Page) are not reliable sources when it comes to anything that happens in a training camp.
So, probably the second one. Let’s not forget that it was Penn’s decision to take a suicide mission at featherweight and use an upright, Koji Oishi-esque striking style that left his longtime coach dumbfounded. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of dude who absorbs feedback, so to speak. If I had to guess, I’d say Penn’s entourage gobbled up all the free-range beef every time he went out to grab a footlong or one of these goddamned things.
(“I’ve always considered myself a human being first and a fighter second. Sometimes that isn’t the best thing for my career.” Photo via Getty)
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson got into a car in New York City one afternoon this week, headed to Connecticut. Shortly after he sat down I asked where, specifically, he was headed to in Connecticut and why.
“I’m going to a little place called, ‘None of your damned business.’”
A standard tongue-in-cheek answer from Jackson, really. He was headed to Connecticut to visit a doctor of his.
The former UFC champion is currently on the mend from a number of injuries. He’s also at the start of what he is optimistic will be a flourishing new career with Bellator and Viacom.
After walking out on the UFC earlier this year, Jackson announced in early June that he had signed with the Viacom-owned Bellator Fighting Championships. He will fight there, wrestle on the TNA pro wrestling circuit, appear in a reality show airing on Spike and, he hopes, star in Paramount Pictures films, also owned by Viacom.
Despite this windfall of opportunity, I was a bit concerned for Jackson as an outside observer. Increasingly, he’s sounded less like the terrorizing, hungry fighter that became a world champion and more like an aging veteran content to show up, take lumps and collect a pay check.
“I know that realistically I probably won’t win all my fights in Bellator. But I’ll be damned if I won’t entertain people. I’m going to come over and put on the most exciting fights.”
That sentiment sounded generous, surely, but also a bit unsafe. In response, I wrote that “When a fighter who used to once be driven to be the best now simply hopes to titillate spectators by hitting and being hit, however, it can be a bad sign of damage to come.”
My concern was unfounded, though, Jackson says. Either I wasn’t listening or I didn’t get what he was saying.
(“I’ve always considered myself a human being first and a fighter second. Sometimes that isn’t the best thing for my career.” Photo via Getty)
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson got into a car in New York City one afternoon this week, headed to Connecticut. Shortly after he sat down I asked where, specifically, he was headed to in Connecticut and why.
“I’m going to a little place called, ‘None of your damned business.’”
A standard tongue-in-cheek answer from Jackson, really. He was headed to Connecticut to visit a doctor of his.
The former UFC champion is currently on the mend from a number of injuries. He’s also at the start of what he is optimistic will be a flourishing new career with Bellator and Viacom.
After walking out on the UFC earlier this year, Jackson announced in early June that he had signed with the Viacom-owned Bellator Fighting Championships. He will fight there, wrestle on the TNA pro wrestling circuit, appear in a reality show airing on Spike and, he hopes, star in Paramount Pictures films, also owned by Viacom.
Despite this windfall of opportunity, I was a bit concerned for Jackson as an outside observer. Increasingly, he’s sounded less like the terrorizing, hungry fighter that became a world champion and more like an aging veteran content to show up, take lumps and collect a pay check.
“I know that realistically I probably won’t win all my fights in Bellator. But I’ll be damned if I won’t entertain people. I’m going to come over and put on the most exciting fights.”
That sentiment sounded generous, surely, but also a bit unsafe. In response, I wrote that “When a fighter who used to once be driven to be the best now simply hopes to titillate spectators by hitting and being hit, however, it can be a bad sign of damage to come.”
My concern was unfounded, though, Jackson says. Either I wasn’t listening or I didn’t get what he was saying.
“I have the same attitude now in fighting that I’ve always had,” he tells me from inside the car headed to his doctor in Connecticut.
“People misunderstand what I say. I’ve always fought to entertain the fans, and I think I have a pretty good record [of winning] doing that. A lot of times you win but sometimes you make a mistake. You get caught because you left yourself exposed. I think I’ve done good with that approach. I’ve always been a fighter to entertain, not just to win.
“But when I came to America it got to be a little different because of the fans. The fans here are different and only care if you win. If you lose, they don’t care if you were exciting, or fought injured. In Japan it was different. Maybe it’s just different because they are speaking Japanese and you don’t understand what they say to you [chuckles] but the feeling back there when I fought in Pride is different than what I found when I came to the U.S. and fought in the UFC. I started to care more about winning, and playing it a little more safe. Now I’m just getting back to my roots where my main objective is to entertain.”
His wanting to simply fight in exciting fashion isn’t a sign of Jackson being burned out on MMA, he says. The Memphis native still wants to win. It’s just that focusing on fighting hard and being exciting also makes him a better fighter.
“It takes the pressure off me,” he explains.
“I know when two guys step into the cage, there is a 50% chance that one is going to win and 50% chance that he’s going to lose. I know that. Both fighters can’t be winners every time. So, I can’t focus too much on that and put that pressure on my shoulders. At the end of the day, it’s about entertainment.
“I could go out there and put on boring ass fights for the fans, taking people down and humping them like Chael Sonnen [laughs]. I can go and fight that way but I don’t think people will buy my pay per views. How can you be a fighter named ‘Rampage’ and be taking people down, holding them down, pushing them against the cage? There are a lot of tricks that fighters do like that and I know them all. I just don’t want to use them and fight that way.”
Jackson’s rosy outlook on his new Bellator/TNA deal also sounded a bit naïve, considering how he’s eventually soured on so many prior business dealings in the past decade. “Rampage” once thought Pride was great, then got sick of them and said that Dana White had saved him before then ultimately falling out with the UFC President.
The fighter trusted an old trainer with managing his career and handling his estate, only to become disillusioned when he says he was taken advantage of. Jackson says that his affairs are in much better shape these days.
He’s got a good contract with Viacom and it is the result of solid management. “Right now I’ve got one of the best managers in MMA,” Jackson assures me.
“He’s really good. He’s honest, which is the one thing that is very important to me. A lot of times the public don’t understand that the fighters, when we training for a fight, that’s what we focus on. We don’t want to focus on business while we’ve got to train for a fight. So, a manager is very important. A manager know basically everything about you. My manager now, he’s the one that put together this deal right here and it is one of the best deals I’ve ever had. I’m back on Spike, I’m going to fight, I get to do pro wrestling and I have opportunities for movies. Athletes always say, ‘I could be making more money,’ but I have to say that I’m very happy with this deal and he did a great job. I’m happy with everything.”
Certainly, there is a lot of business to manage in Jackson’s world these days. In addition to fighting, Jackson has already appeared on a TNA wrestling telecast and is pitching a movie script that he’s written to Paramount.
As a matter of fact, “Rampage” says that he just had a meeting with a writer that Viacom sent his way to help him work on his script. “They are helping me write a script. I wrote one but I’m not a script writer. They already got me on TNA and they are working on a fight for me before the year ends. Plus, I’m going to start filming the reality show soon. And, the car they got for me is going to get dropped off Friday.”
Jackson says that pro wrestling has always been a dream for him but acknowledges that the business may be even tougher on one’s body than MMA is. “Pro wrestling looks like it is tougher on the body than MMA because they do it so often,” he observes.
“When I was young I used to fight six times a year. These guys can go six times a month. My style of pro wrestling is going to have to be a style that is not so hard on my body. Maybe it will be a little harder on my opponents. My body has been through it. I’m going to have to bring my own style to wrestling. I’m not going to do crazy high-flying stuff because that’s not me.”
Jackson says that TNA is providing him with a pro wrestling coach and that he will begin to learn how to run the ropes, take falls and everything else involved in the wrasslin’ biz soon. For now, Jackson has to get healthy.
He hasn’t fought since January and doesn’t say how much he weighs at this moment. In the past, however, Jackson has ballooned in weight in between fights — making for tough weight cuts.
“I’ve always considered myself a human being first and a fighter second,” he explains.
“Sometimes that isn’t the best thing for my career but no one is perfect. Ideally, my ideal weight in between fights would be 225 pounds. But that is in a perfect world. I’ve got a lot of muscle on my body. You add a little fat onto that and there you go.”
After filming “The ‘A’-Team” and before fighting Rashad Evans, Jackson had a particularly large amount of weight to lose. He enlisted the help of former fighter and current strength, conditioning and nutrition coach Mike Dolce.
Dolce now works on UFC products in addition to his own coaching business and recently gave an interview where he claimed that Jackson was his most challenging client because the fighter wasn’t honest about what he ate and showed little will-power. Secret stashes of chocolate bars were a constant hindrance, according to Dolce.
Jackson dismisses Dolce’s criticisms. “Mike Dolce is just promoting himself. All that guy does is talk shit,” he says.
“If you look at the Countdown show to fights before I worked with Dolce and while I was working with him, my face actually looked better before I worked with him…I did my last weight cuts myself. I got a chef and did it myself.
“When was the last time Mike Dolce won a fight himself? He says I didn’t win without him. My last three fights I lost because Jon Jones kicked my ass and I was injured for my last two fights. I didn’t lose because of my weight. I’m a human being first and a fighter second…I don’t eat, sleep and breathe this stuff. I nibble a little bit sometimes. All you have to do is eat clean to lose weight. He has the ‘Dolce Diet’ and tries to fool people into thinking it is something special. Everything in the ‘Dolce Diet’ you can learn yourself by searching on the internet.”
Feuds, new business deals and everything else aside, if Jackson is going to continue fighting and do so before the end of the year, he’ll need to properly motivated to do so. He insists that he is.
His hunger to compete is back. Once he heals up, Jackson says he’s eager to get inside the cage once more. “Yeah. I can’t wait,” he says.
“I just want my body to get as close to 100% as it can. I’ve been fighting injured for a while. Fans don’t see that. All they see is you losing. They don’t see you missing training. All they see is you getting your ass kicked. What I’ve got to do is get my body right.”
