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Elias Theodorou: Fighting, Modeling and the Art of Shameless Self-Promotion

TORONTO — Rick Marrs and his 11-year-old son, Kyle, stand side by side in the cage, backs against the fence, unsure of what will happen next. A man bounces over to them, wearing a lime green T-shirt and black leggings. His long black hair is tied…

“Hi guys!” he says. “I’m Elias!”

Safe to say from the expressions on Rick’s and Kyle’s faces: Whatever nerves they had about getting free MMA training from a UFC star after Rick won this session in a recent contest, they’re gone in an instant. Elias Theodorou has them immediately at ease.

The next instant, he has his new charges sashaying back and forth alongside him, practicing jabs and one-twos, saying things like “Bounce forward!” and “Be on your tiptoes!” and “Hands up!”

“You don’t want to hurt the moneymaker, right?” he asks.

It’s a jokey throwaway in most cases, but for Theodorou, it’s more of a mission statement.

Theodorou is 14-2 as a pro fighter, including 6-2 in the UFC. He’s successful but not what you’d call a “contender.” He doesn’t quite crack the top 15 of the UFC’s official rankings for his weight class.

But what he lacks in big-time wins, he makes up for in other ways. Most notably, he’s handsome. Very handsome. He long ago crowned his hair the best in MMA, and he didn’t spark a lot of debate. Plenty of people lobbed insults his way. He turned them upside down, owning his metro-ness and spinning it into gold.

In fact, that’s why he’s in this Ontario gym on a Saturday morning. He’s the North American brand ambassador for Pert shampoo, and the company essentially made Theodorou the grand prize of a contest.

“The contrast of a male fighter talking about his hair in an aesthetics capacity differentiated me from the stereotypical shaved head and tattoos,” Theodorou explains. “It is obviously a concern that one broken nose could damage not only my face but my plans. But at the same time, I have 95 stitches in my face.

“The best thing about winning a fight is not looking like you got in a fight.”

A UFC fighter with a face too pretty to punch? Seems like the narrative is too perfect to be true, right?

Parts of it are. Theodorou, 29, works as a pro fighter, a sport that’s not exactly conducive to facial symmetry. He is also literally a hair model, a line of work that values physical appearance—you know, just a little bit. He also does a lot of on-camera work, where similar tenets apply.

There’s more to it, though. UFC fighters earn far less money than their counterparts in other pro sports—despite often risking more, physically—and sponsorship opportunities are severely limited, so personal brand-building and creativity are important skill sets for fighters who want a bigger return on their athletic investment.

“Build yourself into a star, and you won’t be talking about money fights,” said none other than UFC President Dana White in January. “It’s getting to a point where Conor McGregor has exploded. … And even if you’re not fighting Conor McGregor, you want to be on Conor McGregor’s card. Become a star. Don’t worry about Conor McGregor or fighting on Conor McGregor’s card. Become a star yourself.”

That would seem to indicate that individual fighters, and not the promotion, are viewed to be in control, for better or worse, of their own promotional destinies. If that is indeed the case, Theodorou is a leading voice of a new MMA mentality.

Selling Yourself

It’s not just Pert. Theodorou also has deals with Samsung and Under Armour. He has signed on with the Mattel toy company to help market Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and—yes, this is really a thing—Man Bun Ken.

The hair isn’t so silly anymore, is it?

“My portfolio is not your typical endorsement portfolio for a fighter to be involved in,” Theodorou says.

He recently made waves by becoming a “Ring Boy,” a lighthearted answer to the ubiquitous, scantily clad ring girls who accompany more or less any fight card. He trademarked that term, by the way. So don’t even try it, Alan Jouban. (Theodorou makes his major league Ring Boy debut March 24 for the all-female Invicta FC promotion.) Theodorou leveraged the Ring Boy attention to promote the launch of his new YouTube channel, The Mane Event—also a trademarked term. A TV show and a movie—an MMA and video-game-themed comedy called Last Hit—are both in development, as are plenty of other business ventures.

“He’s very charismatic,” says Pamela Kennedy, a public relations consultant who works with Theodorou. “He has a marketing background. He hustles. He has a very can-do attitude. He understands how to get good messaging out there, and he approaches it from the eyes of a brand.”

Conversations with Theodorou, who has a degree in advertising from Humber College in Toronto, are like a master class in the topic. He peppers them with shop talk, happily holding forth on content partnerships and brand refreshings and product placement. He’s a born self-promoter.

“MMA isn’t really paying a lot right now, but it creates opportunities elsewhere,” Theodorou says. “If MMA isn’t paying, I have to find something that is. At first, I kept my job as a bartender. MMA gave me the ability to fuse it all together and not having to grow up and get a real job. MMA is a real sport with real discipline and real athleticism, but I don’t think of it as a real job.

“It’s the reality of having other income outside of fighting. Say I get $2,000 for a fight, but then I do three days on, let’s say, a TV show, and I get $7,000. There were little things like that that I was able to do.”

Little things like entertaining Rick and Kyle for an afternoon. After the in-ring session, Theodorou relaxes with them in a salon in a Toronto suburb, sipping espresso spiked with sambuca (Kyle abstains). A stylist comes by and wraps a hot towel around Theodorou’s face as he reclines into a sink for shampooing. Rather than seem awkward, Theodorou leans in, encouraging onlookers to take a few snaps to capture a silly moment. Just make sure the word “Pert” is visible on the T-shirt!

That’s the quality that endears him to fans and sponsors. He’s genuinely, unfailingly nice. He will pick you up at the airport and carry your bags to the hotel. It’s not artifice. He is supremely confident but never arrogant. He’s candid without quite being a trash-talker. He’s interested in other people, listening as much as he talks. In real life, he is much like his well-known Twitter feed—upbeat, positive, responsive and almost pathologically outgoing. If there’s a problem, he kills it with kindness.

For some people, though, it can all start to feel a little cloying, especially coming in the package that it does.

“Twitter has a lot of negative content, but my feed is probably 80 percent positivity,” Theodorou says. “I wouldn’t say anything [on Twitter] I wouldn’t say in front of you—whereas unfortunately nowadays people are just horrible to each other. I just try to be the opposite of that. … [But] people don’t like the pretty man who seems to kind of have everything kind of going for him.”

After the salon, Theodorou and the contest winners make their final stop of the day—lunch at an upscale steakhouse. There’s a lot of laughter. He playfully prods Kyle to try a piece of the calamari appetizer (he doesn’t go for it). Theodorou asks them more questions than they ask him. He laces the conversation with factoids about science and history. He’s a consummate host.

“He’s fun to hang out with,” says Kyle. “He kind of likes the same things I do. Fighting is fun. He’s fun to play around with.”

On a larger scale, that may be the secret ingredient in Theodorou’s recipe. Whether it’s a quiet lunch or a room full of corporate executives, he has never met a stranger.

As he himself puts it: “I have a genetic shame deficiency.”

“He has no embarrassment level, at all,” says longtime girlfriend Michaela “Max” Altamuro. “He’ll just walk into a room and walk up to a bunch of people he doesn’t know that look super important, and I’m in the corner cringing. He just walks up to them and goes, ‘Hey guys, I’m Elias!’ And immediately they’ll just take to him, and within five minutes he’s worked out some kind of business deal with them.

“I’m embarrassed by him and impressed by him at the same time.”

Addressing Criticism

Altamuro actually has a central role in the Theodorou narrative: She’s the one who told him to grow his hair out.

“He had Justin Bieber hair when we met,” she recalls.

Lounging on a couch in the apartment they share in downtown Toronto, Altamuro tells the touching story of their first meeting: She winged a piece of candy at his head.

“He kept looking over at me but wouldn’t come over, and it was annoying the crap out of me,” she says. “So I was like, ‘S–t or get off the pot!’ Come over or stop looking at me. So I threw a candy at him. And he came over to me and said, ‘Did you just throw this at me?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You looked hungry.'”

It was certainly kinder than most of the slings and arrows Theodorou faces. And it’s more complex than mere jealousy over his looks.

In some cases, it’s based on his fighting style, which features prominently awkward bursts of striking activity. The style works well at keeping opponents off balance, as does his constant stream of feints and stance-switching, and his athleticism is obvious—but it doesn’t exactly brim with world-class technical mastery. He also spends a lot of time in the clinch, though he doesn’t necessarily use that time to mount substantial offense.

Critics contend that he doesn’t have the power or submission prowess to finish fights—that all-important metric of entertainment value. Of Theodorou’s eight UFC contests, all but two have gone the distance.

It’s something Theodorou is keenly aware of, and something he pledges to address in future contests. He didn’t start training in earnest until college and doesn’t have any special pedigree in any one martial art. Although being an MMA “native” can pay dividends, it also means he has a steeper learning curve compared to opponents who started at a much earlier age.

“One of his strengths is he has no foundation in the traditional martial arts, so coming into the scene so fast, that lack of foundation has been a strength,” says Chad Pearson, Theodorou’s coach at Xtreme Couture Toronto. “He’s just now getting to the point where he’s tying his techniques together.

“He has a very awkward style that’s challenging for even the best guys in the world to deal with.”

Throughout the course of a weekend, Theodorou’s only flash of irritation comes at the mention of the word “snowflake.” It was one of the terms bandied about on social media after Theodorou’s November defeat of Dan Kelly, which started with Theodorou uncharacteristically refusing a glove touch, unfolded in fairly lackluster fashion and ended with Theodorou putting Kelly on blast for some pre-fight brinksmanship.

“I put up 129 strikes,” Theodorou says of the bout. “The point-fighting issue could come up, but it takes two to tango. I think Dan gave me a path, and in some ways you’re only as good as your dance partner. I found a path of least resistance against someone who was just coming at me.”

Theodorou takes pains to emphasize his desire to earn more stoppage wins but at the same time asserts, with that trademark unabashedness, that his fans in the boardroom take precedence over those in the chat room. If that means winning ugly over risking a loss for the sake of excitement, so be it.

“As someone that is building much beyond being a fighter, [a win] allows me to go into the next round of meetings that I have for projects that in many ways will be equal to or larger than being a fighter someday,” he says. “As much as sometimes people kind of might get angry at the idea…you have to show up and you have to win.”

A New Model

People around Theodorou repeatedly praise him for his hustle, for thinking outside the proverbial box to secure sponsorships that go beyond the typical realm of apparel, nutrition products and fight gear. And it’s something he largely has done on his own. The model looks help, but without hard work and shoe-leather dedication to the effort, it probably wouldn’t have happened.

Barring a major shakeup, fighter pay is not expected to rise anytime soon. Top UFC stars are certainly wealthy, but the rank and file like Theodorou have little chance of ever seeing the riches that other pro athletes enjoy as a matter of course.

“Not everyone’s going to be a champion,” Theodorou says. “There’s so much risk and so much that’s not set as far as how much money you can make. But I want to be one of the top earners even if I’m never a champ.”

Theodorou says he makes more now from his business deals than he does from fighting, although he readily acknowledges that the latter is what makes the former possible. He also says that being a self-starter on such projects is not as hard as it may seem. Effective social media is the first plank in the platform. That’s how the Pert deal came about.

“Elias was brought in through social media,” Kennedy says. “He hit the target market, a young 25-to-30-year-old man who cares about his grooming but doesn’t want to spend too much time on it. He is very engaging and interacts with his followers. He comes across as authentic and he can laugh at himself in a good way.”

In addition, partnerships with local and regional businesses that he was somehow connected to or interested in—companies with which Theodorou still works—helped him gain experience and build a resume.

“Be you,” Theodorou advises. “Competition and success in sports are all about creating a narrative. People pick their sides and root for them to succeed or to fail.”

In the gym, his coach, Pearson, says Theodorou turned a corner after a loss to Thiago Santos in 2015. As Theodorou puts it, the defeat was a wakeup call that led to more “adulting.”

“It was being on time for appointments and the simple attribute of respecting other people’s schedules,” Pearson says. “He started to put those around him before himself. … In between reps he used to look around. He would talk to other people. Now there is an understanding of focus, and a focus entirely on the technique itself. It was always something I was hoping he would grasp.”

At 29, he is not a youngster in the sport, but according to Theodorou, there’s plenty yet to come, on all fronts.

A self-described “aggressive progressive,” he thinks often about running for office someday. In the meantime, he’ll have to content himself with being a pro fighter, spokesmodel, brand ambassador and digital content creator.

“My goal is to be one of the favorite sons of Toronto, and to build myself up on that,” Theodorou says. “Mixed martial arts creates a platform for attention, and I’m using those forms of attention.

“I’m going to squeeze this lemon for all it’s worth. It’s a vehicle for things I can create in addition to being an athlete.”

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC Hot Prospect Mackenzie Dern Isn’t the Next Rousey, but She Shows Promise

For nearly three full rounds Saturday at UFC 222, it was hard to justify the hype around Mackenzie Dern.
The hot prospect had her hands full with Ashley Yoder, whose southpaw stance frustrated Dern throughout their women’s strawweight fight at T-Mobile…

For nearly three full rounds Saturday at UFC 222, it was hard to justify the hype around Mackenzie Dern.

The hot prospect had her hands full with Ashley Yoder, whose southpaw stance frustrated Dern throughout their women’s strawweight fight at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Yoder‘s athleticism and conditioning also allowed her to keep the bout standing and avoid Dern‘s vaunted Brazilian jiu-jitsu game.

With time ticking away in the final stanza, however, Dern finally fully committed on a takedown attempt and put Yoder on the mat. Once there, she moved effortlessly to her opponent’s back and applied a rear-naked choke that might well have finished the fight if she’d had more time to work.

As it stood, Dern finished the bout latched like an anaconda around Yoder‘s back, and the display earned her a split-decision victory (28-29, 29-28, 29-28) in her Octagon debut.

“I’m very hard on myself, so I really wanted to get the submission,” Dern said at the post-fight press conference, via Sherdog.com’s Tristen Critchfield. “I’m a jiu-jitsu girl, so I’m disappointed unless I get it. But I am also much more than just jiu-jitsu, so going out and fighting a lot of stand-up was fun, and I’m glad I got to show that side of my game.”

Now comes the hard part: living up to the considerable expectations that preceded her arrival in the UFC.

If the Yoder bout proved anything, it’s that it’s going to be a slow burn with Dern. Here’s hoping she gets the chance to take things at her own pace.

The 24-year-old is the daughter of decorated BJJ ace Wellington “Megaton” Dias and was a bona fide submission grappling prodigy by the time she was 14 years old. After winning jiu-jitsu world championships at every belt level—including a run of golds in both gi and no-gi competition—her transition to MMA in the summer of 2016 garnered significant media attention.

A 5-0 record on the independent circuit scored her a UFC contract and even enticed a few comparisons to former women’s bantamweight champion and pay-per-view powerhouse Ronda Rousey.

You could say the bar was set pretty high for the Phoenix native before she even set foot on the big stage.

Now that her initial appearance is finished, we can say emphatically that Dern isn’t the next Rousey, but she showed enough potential to keep us interested in whatever happens next. The most important factor in her evolution as an MMA fighter will be whether she can mature at her own pace or if matchmakers rush her into the spotlight.

Say this for Dern: When things are clicking, she has an exciting style.

Though she was largely overmatched in the striking game by Yoder, it didn’t stop Dern from routinely wading into the fray with her own powerful punching combinations.

She never solved the riddle of Yoder‘s left-handed style, but Dern was the aggressor for much of the fight. Coupled with the ever-present threat of her world-class submissions, that devil-may-care attitude makes her eminently watchable.

Granted, there was a lot to be skeptical of, as well. Dern‘s takedowns were nonexistent for the first 14-plus minutes of the fight, meaning she didn’t get the chance to show her best skills until the closing moments. She also wasn’t able to utilize the clinch to her advantage and got briefly dropped by a Yoder left hand that landed behind her ear in the second round.

But she won—which was the only must-have on Day 1—and Dern is still young enough to build significantly on her tremendous grappling base.

She lacks the pervasive killer instinct of Rousey, the obvious athleticism of Holly Holm or the fearsome power of Cris “Cyborg” Justino, but Dern has something worth paying attention to.

She’s likely not going to become the UFC’s next megastar, and it seems a long shot she’ll even become a champion. But her enthusiasm for competition is infectious, and the unique combination of her youth and popularity makes her the sort of fighter the UFC should want to cultivate.

If anything, she just needs more time to round out her striking game and takedowns. Against UFC competition, she will need to not only be able to hold her own with stand-up fighters much better than Yoder, but also be able to dictate the terms of where a fight takes place.

Otherwise, her deadly BJJ skills will sit unused like a Formula 1 car you can’t take out of the garage.

There may also be questions about which weight division becomes Dern‘s home. Twice during her rise to the UFC, she competed in catchweight affairs (at 118 pounds and 120 pounds, respectively) and fought once at flyweight (125 pounds).

This week, she kept onlookers in suspense by being the last UFC 222 fighter to hit the scales during Friday morning’s official weigh-in. Dern ultimately made the upper reaches of the strawweight limit at 116 pounds, but it remains to be seen where she will stick.

The UFC’s new women’s flyweight division is still finding its legs, with recently crowned champion Nicco Montano at the helm. A healthy crop of contenders are also there, including UFC stalwarts such as Valentina Shevchenko, Lauren Murphy, Alexis Davis and Liz Carmouche.

You could make the case Dern‘s size makes her a more natural flyweight than strawweight, but she won’t get a break in her level of competition if she moves up.

By advancing to the UFC so fast and at such a young age, she’s starting far behind top-level fighters such as 115-pound champion Rose Namajunas and former champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Because of it, her handlers are going to need the patience and restraint to bring her along slowly.

That could be easier said than done, though. Neither strawweight nor flyweight is a deep division. If Dern puts together a few consecutive wins, the UFC might find itself in the unenviable position of needing to leverage her marketability in every way it can.

Hopefully, that doesn’t result with Dern getting rushed into deep water, where she would surely take a beating from the UFC’s elite.

That would be a waste, considering the obvious promise of her grappling pedigree.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

MMA’s Greatest Female Fighter Cris Cyborg Continues to Dominate Opponents

Will there come a point when we tire of seeing Cris Cyborg obliterate lesser competition simply because it’s the only way we get to see her in the UFC?
I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t even know if it’s a question we should be asking. Wha…

Will there come a point when we tire of seeing Cris Cyborg obliterate lesser competition simply because it’s the only way we get to see her in the UFC?

I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t even know if it’s a question we should be asking. What I do know is that Saturday night in Las Vegas we saw the latest chapter in a timeworn story.

Cyborg, the UFC’s women’s featherweight champion (and the division’s only member), beat Yana Kunitskaya via first-round bludgeoning to cap off a scintillating UFC 222. Poor Kunitskaya was a spirited foe, as so many of Cyborg’s opponents are, right up until the moment they realize all hope is gone. Kunitskaya even scored an ankle-pick takedown and kept Cyborg on the canvas for a minute or two before succumbing to a TKO.

But Kunitskaya was also a bantamweight making both her UFC promotional debut and featherweight debut in a late-ish notice bout promoted solely to achieve the UFC’s weird goal of having a title of some sort defended in every UFC pay-per-view main event.

She was Joe vs. the Volcano. She was the coyote trying to best the roadrunner. What I’m saying is: We knew the end before the beginning. The very announcement of the fight spoiled its conclusion. And for Kunitskaya, the conclusion came the moment Cyborg got off the canvas. Kunitskaya’s chance was gone, fleeting like the wind. It only took a couple of punches from Justino to turn Kunitskaya’s visage into that of an overmatched, scared competitor. She was in over her head, and she realized it.

And then it was done. Cyborg dropped her to the canvas. Kunitskaya covered her head in the ultimate sign of surrender. The fight was brief, and then it was gone.

None of this is Cyborg’s fault. She’s in the world’s premiere fighting organization. It’s where she should’ve been competing from the beginning. Or at least from the moment president Dana White decided women were marketable enough to put his company’s weight behind.

That she was kept outside the castle walls for so long because of a particularly nasty mix of misogyny and the desire to protect the star power of the UFC’s former golden girl, Ronda Rousey, is, at best, unfortunate.

It’s not her fault that no other woman in the UFC both (a) competes with regularity in her weight class and (b) is good enough to give her more than a reason to get a decent sweat going. Not even Holly Holm, who is indeed good, could do much beyond exhibiting the kind of grit and fortitude needed to last 25 minutes in the cage with Justino.

That Holm was lauded for the accomplishment is particularly indicative of Justino’s place in the world—merely not being forcibly turned ass over tea kettle was an admirable feat.

And, look: It’s not the UFC’s fault, either. It’s doing the best it can in promoting her. That is something, at least—especially when you consider White once compared her to a male fighter and stomped around on stage in one of the more embarrassing acts by a human executive in modern sports history.

Now, the company is pushing her as the terrifying force of nature she is. That’s something akin to progress, even if White still owes her a world of apologies for the hurt he caused over the years.

So what can the UFC do, if it’s already doing what it can? It could make a push to sign more top-tier featherweight fighters. The problem is, there’s no such thing. Sure, there are good fighters out there at 145 pounds, such as Invicta’s Megan Anderson. But Anderson and her ilk are merely good. And good, to speak plainly, is just not good enough.

Cyborg cannot and should not attempt to drop to bantamweight, either. I used to beat the “all she has to do is lose some muscle mass” drum, like many of you, and then I realized how dumb I sounded. Justino is someone who strains to make 145 pounds as it is; asking her to drop a further 10 pounds solely because we want to see her against better fighters is selfish. We shouldn’t do that anymore, especially when we’re all realizing how dumb weight cutting is in the first place.

There’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes. She looks like the best of the limited options. And still, she is yet another bantamweight fighter moving up. She’s a better bantamweight than anyone Justino has faced lately. But she’s still a bantamweight, and there isn’t much of a question as to who would win that fight. Justino is Nunes except, you know, much bigger, stronger and better in literally every way a person can be better at fighting than a peer.

What’s the answer? As I wrote earlier, I don’t know. I’m quite certain you don’t, either. Because it feels like this might be a situation where there are no good answers.

What we are left with is the privilege of seeing the greatest fighter in female mixed martial arts history while she plies her trade for the world’s biggest combat promotion. There was a time not long ago when that seemed out of the realm of possibility, and so I suppose one way to look at this thing is to just be grateful we’re able to see her in such a showcase. She deserves the platform. She deserves for the world to see her.

It’s something, at least.

But I can’t help wanting more than just something. More than repeated thrashings of inferior, smaller fighters. More than showcases. And I’m sure Justino would welcome more with open arms and flailing fists.

But maybe this is all there is.

The thing we, you and I and Justino, have to decide is: Is all there is enough to keep us happy?

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Big Sky Country: Snoop Dogg Favorite Sean O’Malley Is Flying High in the UFC

For a top prospect in any other sport, it would have been a bona fide disaster. One moment, “Sugar” Sean O’Malley (9-0) was palling around with company executives, with an impressive minor league win having guaranteed him a shot at the big time.
The ne…

The next?

He was filmed smoking cannabis with notorious, though grandfatherly, rapper Snoop Dogg.

But MMA is no regular sport. It’s chaos in a cage. Mr. Dogg is not just a fan but a part-time commentator, and the smoke out occurred on set in his trailer, cameras rolling. Smoking with Snoop wasn’t a public relations crisis for O’Malley. It was a marketing opportunity.

“I got to go hang out in Snoop Dogg’s trailer,” O’Malley said, sitting on the floor of the coaches’ locker room at the newly redesigned MMA Lab in Phoenix. “Anybody that smokes wishes they could smoke with Snoop Dogg one time in their life. So it was awesome. It was something I’ll never forget.

“It all came from winning a fight. And if I can go out there and keep winning fights, I’ll be able to do everything I dream of. It’s all about winning the next fight.”

It’s a mature answer for a 23-year-old kid who is a self-confessed pothead, both polite, perfunctory and pushing the interview back where he wants it to be: talking about fighting. In a few minutes he will be in the cage, taking on two of his teammates in full contact sparring rounds. It’s a subject he takes seriously, curly hair bouncing around as we talk, with his face almost ecstatic talking about triumphs past and especially those still to come.

“He’s really still developing,” MMA Lab head coach John Crouch, who has trained under champions like Royce Gracie and supervised UFC kingpins like Benson Henderson. “I think the sky is the limit for him. I love the kid. Super great kid. Super dynamic. Creative with his MMA. And he’s getting good on the ground. I think by the time people test him there, they will find it isn’t an easy test to pass.”

That wasn’t always the case. Like all fighters, the Montana native had to be humbled before he could be great, to see his every action as futile, eyes pure with pain as his hopes died in a barrage of punches and punishing holds.

When he came to the MMA Lab at 18, following the footsteps of fellow Montanan Tim Welch, a journeyman who almost made the big show and was a local legend in Big Sky Country, thought he knew what fighting was.

An undefeated amateur back home, he had been in more than a dozen organized bouts. The story, though details differed, was roughly the same every time—even as a teenager, he was quicker, smarter and sharper than anyone else they could find to challenge him.

“My first coach, Johnny Aho, he believed in me,” O’Malley said. “I could have been fighting Anderson Silva, and he would say ‘You could beat him. You’re going to knock him out. You’re too fast. You’re too good. You’ll knock this guy out.’ And I did. I had 14 amateur fights, and I went out there and knocked a lot of them out. Trainingwise, we would pretty much just spar.”

That was before the MMA Lab, where a fighter with potential met fighters whose potential had already been realized—in this case UFC veteran Yaotzin “Yaddi” Meza.

“I came down for 10 days and got beat up real bad by Yaddi,” O’Malley revealed. “Everyone on the team was whooping me. I didn’t have any skill. I was just a fighter. There are different levels. I kind of knew that, but I had never experienced it. No one had ever beaten me up because I was the man at my gym.

“When I came down here I thought I would impress them. They would at least say ‘wow, this kid’s tough.’ But I just got worked. I got whooped and beat up bad. I was crying after practice.”

The story could end right here. Most combat sports stories do. The local hotshot, a high school dropout drifting through his early adulthood, is humiliated and drifts back home to live an entirely uneventful life.

Instead, it lit a fire in O’Malley. He got a job at a group home for the mentally disabled, helping eight people navigate their daily lives, getting them showered and dressed and ready for their day.

“I went home, got a full-time job and saved $2,000,” he said. “Then I packed my stuff, drove down. Now I’ve been here four years in April. Just being in the same room as [former UFC champion] Benson Henderson helps. He has this mentality of wanting to get better no matter what. One rep at a time, just getting better.

“Tim Welch, in his last fight, broke his jaw in the first 20 seconds and fought into the second round with his jaw hanging off. And I was there witnessing it. Being around people like that, I can only go up. You are who you surround yourself with, and that’s the truth. I’m surrounding myself with the baddest dudes in the world. And I’m becoming one.”

You can tell the fighters who still love it from those to whom it has become drudgery. O’Malley loves it, each moment, whether it’s of beauty, happiness or pain. His face is almost joyous as he bounces around the cage, hands down, searching for an opening through which to put the powerful hands that belie his slim frame.

“Watching him spar is fun,” teammate Lauren Murphy said. “A lot of times, the other fighters will kind of stop what they are doing and just watch him. You never know what’s going to happen.”

When he first came to the Lab, that unpredictability was a source of conflict with Crouch. While he didn’t have a house style he insisted on, the veteran coach wanted to be sure everyone under his tutelage understood what they were doing and why.

“I don’t want to change anyone’s style,” Crouch said. “But I do want them to have good fundamentals so they understand the consequences of what they are doing. ‘If you stand like that, guys are going to do this.’ If we figure out how to deal with that, you can do whatever the hell you want.

“He worked on strictly boxing for a while. And I wanted him to wrestle better. Because he’s so upright and so quick, no one is going to want to stand there and mess around with him. If I were coaching against him, I know that’s what I would do.”

There are echoes of Lyoto Machida and other karate practitioners in his movements, hands down, darting, looking for the killer blow rather than an accumulation of points. But he denies any formal connection to the Eastern arts. This is just him, doing what comes naturally.

“I’ve always moved different than a lot of people move,” O’Malley said. “I never thought of it as cocky, but I think coach did when I first came. It’s not that we didn’t get along, but he wanted me to be a little different. Later on, as he started to see me winning fights and doing something with this movement and it’s not just me going out there and being a freak, he started to want me to do it and become better at it.”

On Saturday, O’Malley’s career will launch to the next level. He’ll fight the tough Andre Soukhamthath (12-5), a veteran UFC fighter who has already beat teammate Luke Sanders and whose name draws a bit of a snarl.

“T-Mobile Arena—it’s going to be fun,” O’Malley said. “The more people there, the better. The more energy from the crowd, the more I like it. I’m excited for that.”

He looked down at his hand, flexing it, getting ready for the combat to come as soon as we wound it up. The word “free” is tattooed across his knuckles.

That’s what this fight, what every fight represents to him. Each victory is another step away from the kind of menial life most people live.

“I got it before my fourth fight,” O’Malley said. “I was realizing that I was one of the few people in society who is really free. I can do what I want when I want to. I don’t have to take orders from anyone.

“When I was an amateur, living off sponsors from back home who believed in me, I wanted to get to this point. I haven’t had to work a job since I came from Montana. I was able to bring two other kids from Montana to live with me in my house. I can do what I want, both for me and other people. And that’s why I feel free.”

Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.

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Is It Time for UFC to Move on Without the Great, Troubled Jon Jones?

The eternal saga of Jon Jones continued this week, as the former UFC champion faced what might be his fiercest foe yet—the California State Athletic Commission, where he finally confronted charges of performance-enhancing drug use before his…

The meeting Tuesday, a somewhat comical affair, featured one commissioner sans hearing aid, another giving Jones a verbal battering, a highly paid expert witness relying almost solely on information from a bodybuilding website and Jones himself admitting his signature was forged and that he never actually completed required training materials provided by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).

In other words, it was the typical Jon Jones show.

At the end of the meeting, televised live online and thoroughly mocked on Twitter, Jones was fined $205,000 and had his license suspended in California. But the real decision was punted to USADA, which will adjudicate the issue later this year and decide how long Jones will be suspended from the sport, a number experts suggest could be anywhere from one to four years.

USADA will ponder the same questions we’ve all been asking ourselves in the wake of Jones’ latest batch of trouble, primarily whether or not he deserves leniency after multiple accusations of PED use. It’s an opportunity to show the world just how serious USADA is about sending a message to other athletes that cheating doesn’t pay. Industry veterans Chad Dundas and myself tackle the same issue in this edition of “The Question.”

Snowden: Jones is the greatest MMA fighter in the sport’s short history. The list of his victims could double as a collection of Hall of Famers in the 205-pound class. Whether at distance, in the clinch or on the mat, he remains one of the most dangerous athletes to ever step into the Octagon.

With respect, he’s also a giant, I mean impossibly big, screw up.

Everything we’ve learned about Jones over the years tells us two things for certain: 1) If he’s welcomed back to the Octagon, Jones will continue to thrill us with his athletic exploits; 2) Jones, no matter how sincere he appears in a press conference, is going to mess up again. Perhaps it will be in a new, innovative way, but it’s coming. At this point, it would be naive to think otherwise.

So, what do you think Chad? Is it time to bid Jones farewell? Or is what he offers the sport in excitement and excellence worth a few questionable drug tests and a collection of crashed cars. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Dundas: If Jones’ UFC career ended here and now, I would consider it perhaps the greatest tragedy in a sport that breaks our hearts as a matter of routine. Though he’s already accomplished great things, Jones is but 30 years old, and it’s not unthinkable he could go on fighting another 10 years. Trying to imagine what he might achieve in that time is just mind-boggling.

Of course, to stick around even close to that long he’d have to stay out of trouble, which thus far he’s proved completely incapable of doing.

Sitting here some 24 hours removed from Jones’ disastrous performance in front of the CSAC, I still can’t quite believe how badly it went for him. His team projected confidence leading up to the hearing, going so far as to say they believed Jones would likely fight again in the UFC in 2018. Then he showed up with basically no defense whatsoever besides shrugging his shoulders, saying he had no idea how Turinabol metabolites showed up in his system and that he super-duper hoped everybody would believe him.

A big part of Jones’ denial is based on the notion it would be too dumb for him to knowingly take such an easily detectable steroid when he knew had had an in-competition drug test coming up. But that line of reasoning totally ignores the fact that Jones’ entire recent career has been derailed by him doing really, really dumb stuff over and over again.

Until Jones can chef-up a better explanation, consider me unconvinced of his innocence.

So, to answer your question, Jonathan, it would be a terrible blow to MMA to lose Jones, but it would also be something he brought entirely on himself.

Am I being too hard on the GOAT? And doesn’t it seem like USADA will have to throw the book at the guy if it has any hope of preserving the notion that the UFC’s new anti-doping efforts are for real?

Snowden: Personally, I enjoyed MMA best when it was an outlaw sport, the wild west of athletics with almost no rules and certainly no prohibitions on what you could put into your body to improve performance. It takes a unique person to become a cage fighter. If that requires a little bit extra, from whatever source, I’m okay with that.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to make the rules. And, at the behest of the Nevada Athletic Commission, UFC began officially drug testing fighters back in 2002.

Once you set a standard, it’s only fair that it applies equally to everyone. So, whether or not Jones is a money-making fighter for UFC, whether or not he exudes excellence in all areas and whether or not he was set up in some way, ultimately, he had a banned substance in his body.

Again.

I don’t think USADA can let that slide. I think a two-year ban is fair. It’s not a complete career-killer, but also not a mere slap on the wrist. But I’d also make sure it is clear that any other missteps would come complete with a lifetime ban. I’m willing to give Jones another chance—but not a single chance more. What do you think Chad? Too Judge Dredd?

Dundas: You and I differ on some core issues here, and that’s OK. For my money, the action in the cage has never been better or more fun to watch than it is right now. Twenty-five years of breakneck evolution has produced a generation of athletes who routinely do things we couldn’t have dreamed of at the genesis of so-called “no holds barred” fighting.

And yes, Jones was among the vanguard of that generation, consistently wowing audiences with his athletic greatness since his UFC debut in 2008.

Along with that evolution, however, I believe quality drug testing is necessary, in large part because anything else would be unfair to the fighters who compete without PEDs. That includes—we think—Daniel Cormier, whose only two career losses have come against Jones at UFC 189 and UFC 214.

I applaud the UFC for partnering with USADA to ramp up anti-doping efforts. While the program isn’t perfect, its heart is mostly in the right place.

The Jones situation represents an important, high-profile moment for that partnership. After the Brock Lesnar fiasco at UFC 200, it will be important for both the UFC and USADA to send a message that their increased testing efforts are more than just window-dressing.

If Jones can’t come up with a better defense than the one he presented to the CSAC, then he absolutely deserves whatever suspension he gets. If it’s two years retroactive to his positive test in August 2017, he’d be eligible to return in the fall of 2019, just two months after his 32nd birthday.

He’d still potentially have a long career ahead of him, but as you noted, he’d be all out of chances.

It’d be time for Jones to prove he can be great in MMA and in life.

Jonathan Snowden and Chad Dundas cover combat sports for Bleacher Report.

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Buy or Sell: Are Things Really ‘Going Well’ Between Conor McGregor and the UFC?

The relationship between the UFC and its biggest star, Conor McGregor, has never been more opaque than it is right now.
The lightweight champion hasn’t fought in the Octagon since November 2016, when he won the 155-pound title from Eddie Alvarez at UFC…

The relationship between the UFC and its biggest star, Conor McGregor, has never been more opaque than it is right now.

The lightweight champion hasn’t fought in the Octagon since November 2016, when he won the 155-pound title from Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205. In the wake of his mega boxing match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in August 2017, McGregor has frequently been seen and heard on social media—including the recent claim he tried to “save” UFC 222—but hasn’t made any clear statements about what’s next for him.

UFC President Dana White has been only slightly more forthcoming. The fight company has announced a bout between interim lightweight champ Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov for UFC 223 in April but has been unwilling to confirm it will strip McGregor of his title in the process.

The latest reports offer little in the way of clarity.

Wrestling Observer Newsletter‘s Dave Meltzer wrote Thursday that negotiations are “going well” between the two parties and that the UFC may be planning to have McGregor do “two fights in 2018” (h/t Bloody Elbow’s Aaron Tabuena).

Meanwhile, TMZ Sports caught up with White and tried to ask him some pointed questions about the UFC’s plans for McGregor, but White only chuckled and repeated the same non-answers he gave during the introductory press conference for Ferguson vs. Nurmagomedov.

All of which raises a fleet of interesting questions and possibilities. Here to try to suss out which UFC-McGregor storylines to buy and which to sell are Bleacher Report lead MMA writer Chad Dundas and featured columnist Matthew Ryder.

BUY or SELL? Things are “going well” between the UFC and McGregor right now.

Chad: I’m buying this, though only cautiously. First of all, Meltzer is a credible guy, and I believe him when he reports there are mostly positive feelings around negotiations.

The UFC and McGregor both drive hard bargains, but—aside from a couple minor dust-ups—they have always been able to come together to make business happen. They pulled off the impossible in Mayweather vs. McGregor, for Pete’s sake. Considering all the egos involved in that, anything else should feel like child’s play moving forward.

McGregor must also know his only long-term future is as an MMA fighter and in the UFC. Boxing will quickly turn into a dead end for him. If he’s serious about fighting again without engaging in a lengthy legal battle, I’m betting he will return to the UFC eventually. Anything else is most likely just posturing.

Matthew: I’m selling. I think things are “going well” between the UFC and McGregor the same way they are “going well” for me and hurricanes: As in, I’m not actively being hit by a hurricane, but that doesn’t mean one couldn’t come along and hit me at any time—at which point things would decidedly not be going well.

All is likely pretty quiet between the two sides, but once they get down to brass tacks, there will come a time when the UFC has to do some things it’s never done before to keep a fighter happy. It will have to cough up bigger-than-ever guaranteed fight purses or ownership in the company to keep McGregor happy, plus who knows what else. And you have to think that’s going to be a sticking point.

And when it sticks, Conor, the biggest star the sport has known and the man more deserving of special financial treatment than anyone in history, will balk. I don’t know where else he could go or what else he might do, but the past year has shown that if something other than MMA pays well enough for him to go there or do it, he will.

BUY or SELL? The UFC will strip Conor McGregor of his title before UFC 223.

Chad: Sell. I have no idea what White and the UFC think they are doing with all this double-talk about the lightweight championship. It seems as though the promotion wants to have its cake and eat it too—billing Ferguson vs. Nurmagomedov as being for the “real” title while keeping McGregor ensconced as the company’s most marketable, most popular champion.

Unless things totally break down between the UFC and McGregor, I kind of get the impression the organization is OK with emerging from UFC 223 with two “real” lightweight champions. From a promotional standpoint, maybe that isn’t the worst idea in the world, even if it makes zero sense logically. If that’s the plan, it makes it imperative McGregor fights the winner. That could be a tall task.

Matthew: I’m buying this one. I’m keen on the theory that the UFC will allow Conor to hold the title until Tony and Khabib make weight and line up across the cage from one another, at which point it will strip Conor and name the UFC 223 bout’s winner the official champion.

By the time UFC 223 rolls around, the promotion is going to have a good idea whether it can lock up McGregor for a bout or two in 2018, and I believe company brass will cut bait on the “McGregor as real champion” narrative if that’s what it has to do. After all, Conor isn’t above showing up with a belt anyway—or outright stealing someone else’s—so it would have the promotional material it would need if he did come back to fight Ferguson or Nurmagomedov.

I happen to have $20 I never want to see again right here in my pocket, so I’m buying.

BUY or SELL? The Ferguson-Nurmagomedov winner will be the “real” UFC lightweight champ.

Chad: Sell. White can try to market UFC 223 as being for the “real” title all he wants, but I have a feeling MMA fans likely won’t be as bullish on the idea. Everybody loves Ferguson’s flashy, devil-may-care skills and Nurmagomedov’s ice-cold demeanor, but for the foreseeable future, the path to being the world’s No. 1 155-pound fighter still runs through McGregor.

The Ferguson-Nurmagomedov winner won’t quite have Daniel Cormier’s problems. Neither has previously lost to The Notorious, while Cormier has lost twice to former light heavyweight champ Jon Jones. If I may boost a line from Ric Flair here: To be the man, you (still) have to beat the man.

Matthew: Sell. Sell, sell, sell. Sell. This is classic bogus White carnival barking. To be fair, I can’t hate him for it. He’s been inventing narratives and strong-arming discussions for so long it’s second nature to him. He cannot, however, simply bend the fabric of reality to meet his needs.

McGregor is the champion, and nobody has beaten him for that title. I’m still open to arguing he remains the true featherweight champion as well—in the same way Jones is still the rightful 205-pound champ, but all that is for another day. For these purposes, McGregor is simply the one and true UFC lightweight champion.

Ferg and Nurmy (buddy-cop show, anyone?) are big time in their own right, but until they beat McGregor you can’t consider either of them the “real champ.”

BUY or SELL? McGregor’s next fight will be against the UFC 223 winner.

Chad: Sell! Oh, sweet mother, sell. Look, as I said at the top, I’m pretty confident McGregor will return to the UFC, but I damn sure don’t think he’s going to let the organization start dictating which people he will fight or when. Fact is, Ferguson and Nurmagomedov still represent that most poisonous combination in combat sports: a tough fight for the smallest potential financial return.

Two things we know for sure about McGregor. One, money talks. Two, at least thus far, every forward step he’s taken in his career has been bigger than the last. It’s unclear how he might top his boxing match against Mayweather, but it won’t be with a low-profile bout against T-Ferg or Nurmy.

If and when he returns to the Octagon, a third fight against Nate Diaz, a superfight against someone like Georges St-Pierre or jumping to welterweight to fight for the 170-pound title all make more financial sense.

Matthew: I’m setting myself up to feel like an idiot when “McGregor vs. Mayweather II: THIS TIME THERE ARE NO RULES!” is booked in the UFC in late summer, but what’s life without a bit of risk? I’ll buy.

There has become a general perception in MMA that McGregor is entirely focused on money. While that’s largely true, I’m not sure it’s entirely true. You have to remember McGregor built his legacy on beating the tar out of a boatload of short-notice replacements and never complained about it. In fact, his only UFC loss came to Nate Diaz on short notice.

I’m therefore not sure he’s a man who was never without competitive fire, and I’m not sure he’s a man without competitive fire these days. In fact, I am sure his opportunities to chase money and get rich were born of an unmatched competitive fire from 2014 to 2016. And I think that fire still burns—buoyed further by the claim he offered to fight Frankie Edgar at UFC 222.

I think it’s going to burn him right into a fight with the Ferguson-Nurmagomedov winner, and I can’t wait to see that.

BUY or SELL? McGregor never fights again.

Chad: Sell. White closed out his interview with TMZ Sports with his common refrain that McGregor has so much money in the bank he might never return to combat sports. I admit that, initially, I wondered whether the Mayweather bout might be McGregor’s exit strategy from being a professional fighter. We know he harbors bigger goals—whether as a liquor mogul or as a fight promoter.

Still, at 29, McGregor ain’t done. There’s an essential part of him that craves the competition and the limelight that comes with fighting. It’s hard to get that rush anywhere else. It’s nearly impossible to get it anywhere that will pay him quite as handsomely. I fully believe McGregor will strap on the gloves again. Where? When? Against whom? Those are the real questions.

Matthew: Definitely selling that idea. Be it in the UFC or in a rematch against Mayweather, the Republic of Ireland’s favorite son will 100 percent fight again.

I don’t think he’s long for this fight game, though. He exhibits an awareness of the dangers of his chosen trade and his newfound “Diddy bread” is sure to make it easier to walk away.

I’ll say McGregor fights, in this order: the UFC 223 winner, Floyd Mayweather in MMA (I’m serious, and I hate myself for that), Nate Diaz and the welterweight champion, whoever that is at the time. Then he retires, richer than he could have dreamed he would ever be and with just enough to his legacy for people to remember him mostly fondly.

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