Issue 077
July 2011
There is nothing more deserving – or embarrassing – than when smack talk comes back to bite you in the ass!
Trash talk, like it or loathe it, it’s part of our sport and when fighters walk the walk after they talk the talk it’s impossible not to be impressed. After all, replicating fierce public outbursts with genuine skills and hard work in the Octagon shows true confidence in one’s ability.
However, every now and again talk becomes cheap and loose lips are silenced in dramatic fashion. And whether it’s the fighter you love to hate or your favorite warrior taking the beating, more often than not you can’t help but think they might have deserved to be put in their place.
Here is a Fighters Only list of the most deserving and memorable backfiring trash talk MMA moments…
FRANK MIR VS BROCK LESNAR
UFC 100, Las Vegas, July 2009
As competitive an athlete as there is, Brock Lesnar hardly needed extra motivation ahead of his rematch with Frank Mir at UFC 100; an opportunity to both avenge the only loss of his MMA career and unify the heavyweight titles. Cue Frank Mir’s guide on ‘How to Kick-off a Public Relations Nightmare.’
“A lot of individuals are so worried about being politically correct, I’d rather go ahead and say what’s on my mind. I hate who he (Lesnar) is as a person. I want to break his neck in the ring. I want him to be the first person that dies due to Octagon-related injuries.”
Reprimanded by UFC president Dana White and forced to issue a public apology, Lesnar promised fans that he would “pull out the horseshoe stuck up Frank’s ass and beat him over the head with it.” Judging by the bloody pulp that was once Mir’s face after seven minutes of incessant ground ‘n’ pound it looked like the whole horse and cart had trampled over the former two-time champion as Lesnar made good on his word and politely encouraged the battered Mir to “talk all the s*** you want now.”
MICHAEL BISPING VS DAN HENDERSON
UFC 100, Las Vegas, July 2009
If the seasonal outing of The Ultimate Fighter guarantees one thing – aside from the habitual house-trashing – it is that opposing coaches rarely see eye-to-eye. Throw in national pride, as was the case in season nine’s ‘Team USA vs Team UK,’ and what began as a cordial relationship turned sour as Bisping took every opportunity to revel in Team UK’s success – Ross Pearson and James Wilks completing a whitewash for ‘Bisping’s Boys Abroad.’
Their rivalry never reached the animosity of past or future (see Rampage vs Evans) TUF spats, but Bisping achieved what very few had done before and rattled the ultra laid-back Californian. “I was trying to push his buttons, trying to get him to snap a little bit,” Bisping admitted post-TUF, even going so far as to suggest Henderson‘s best days were behind him. “No disrespect, [but] at 38 years of age, I think he’s got to be slowing down a bit … I don’t think he’s going to catch me . . . Tune in to see the first time ever Dan Henderson gets knocked out.”
Whilst Bisping’s predictions of a historical knockout were emphatically fulfilled, it was he, and not Henderson, who suffered the first career KO as the veteran landed a bomb of an overhand right that was the 2009 Fighters Only World MMA Awards ‘Knockout of the Year.’
DAN HARDY VS CARLOS CONDIT
UFC 120, London, October 2010
Never one to shy away from dropping verbal grenades, Dan Hardy‘s back-catalogue of smack talk is as colorful as his trademark flaming red Mohawk. However, things didn’t go quite to plan when welcoming Carlos Condit to home soil on the Bisping vs Akiyama undercard in October 2010.
Whether it was insulting his opponent on a personal level (“Condit has about as much personality as a toilet seat”), critiquing his stand-up defense (“I could close my eyes and throw a punch in any direction and it would still hit him in the face”), or lamenting his punching power (“He’s not gonna hurt me with his striking”), Hardy ensured that he had Condit’s full attention come fight night. And what a fight it was. In one of the year’s most iconic moments, both fighters threw simultaneous left hooks as Condit’s landed a split-second sooner to score a toe-curling KO and stun the 17,000, London O2 Arena partisan crowd into disbelieving silence.
JOSH KOSCHECK VS GEORGES ST PIERRE
UFC 124, Montreal, December 2010
Following his title eliminator victory over Paul Daley at UFC 113 in St Pierre’s backyard of Montreal, Quebec, Josh Kosheck needed all the time it took to put his T-shirt back on to begin trash talking the champion. Even 17,000 baying Canadians, it would seem, cannot keep Koscheck quiet.
Tireless in his endeavors to “get under his (GSP’s) skin” on the set of The Ultimate Fighter 12, Koscheck made it his mission to get a rise from the unflappable Canadian. From blocking St Pierre’s car in on all sides in the parking lot, to haranguing GSP’s team medic Brad Tate, Koscheck was as relentless as a Velasqeuz ground assault. The AKA member even went so far as to suggest the champion had used steroids and human growth hormones (HGH).
Yet for all Koscheck’s attempted mind-games and promises of reversing his 2007 loss to the champion – “I’m going to knock Georges St Pierre out, either in round two or three” – there was only ever one winner in the rematch. Executing a jab clinic rarely seen inside the Octagon, St Pierre out-struck Koscheck 4:1 to record his sixth straight title defense and leave Koscheck with a grotesquely swollen eye, broken orbital bone and a 60-day medical suspension.
BJ PENN VS GEORGES ST PIERRE
UFC 94, Las Vegas, January 2009
A truly landmark matchup, 2009’s ‘super-fight’ is the first and only time two incumbent UFC titleholders have ever fought each other. Stepping up in weight to challenge St Pierre for his welterweight crown, BJ Penn looked to make history as the only man ever to hold two titles concurrently.
As the first ever UFC Primetime mini-series followed the fighters’ every move in the build-up to the event, fans were treated to behind-the-scenes footage like never before. Criticized in the past for putting natural talent before hard work, ‘The Prodigy’ looked more focused and determined as he called out his opponent. “I’m going to try and kill you, Georges, and I’m not joking about that. We’re going to go to the death. I’m not going to stop.”
Fast forward to fight night and St Pierre not only stopped Penn, but forced his corner to throw in the towel following four rounds of superior wrestling and brutal ground ‘n’ pound. Landing a total of 297 strikes, 199 to the head alone, St Pierre cemented his place as one the sports pound-for-pound elites whilst BJ retuned, disgruntled, to the lightweight division amidst the ‘‘Greasegate’ furore.
QUINTON JACKSON VS RASHAD EVANS
UFC 114, Las Vegas, May 2010
Billed as the UFC’s greatest ever grudge match, last year’s showdown between Quinton ’Rampage’ Jackson and Rashad ‘Suga’ Evans carried a weight of expectation unlike any other in UFC history. Cast as opposing coaches on season ten of The Ultimate Fighter, verbal confrontation escalated with each passing episode as a plethora of smack was thrown by both men. Evan’s threatened to break a shoe up in Jacksons’ “motherf****** ass,” while Rampage feared he could hit Evans so hard “you might not wake up”, and both men traded “you’re a bitch” insults like it was America’s Next Top Model.
Even after the series wrapped the feud continued with a passion as Twitter became the battleground of choice. Rampage, in particular, going old-school with a ‘Yo’ Mama’ homage – “[Rashad’s] mama’s so fat he bought her a UFC shirt and even Dana White though it stood for Ugly Fat Chick.” Yet with such a heavy burden of hopes and hypes only a thunderous KO or lights-out submission was ever going to fulfil the fight’s mammoth billing. Instead the big event failed to live up to anticipation and delivered a mixed bag of ‘if’s’ and ‘maybes’ that was more clinch-fest than slug-fest.
JAMES TONEY VS RANDY COUTURE
UFC 118, Boston, August 2010
When Dana White relented and gave James Toney a UFC fight after months of stalking, very few gave the rotund boxer much hope in his MMA debut – and for good reason. “Months” of training had evidently failed to cover the basics such as a takedown defense, a guard, or instructions on how to tap in the event of being choked unconscious as Couture secured a first-round submission victory. Never one to shy from self-promotion, however, Toney had called Couture a “bum” in the pre-fight build-up, threatened to “hit him so hard his grandparents will feel it” and even predicted there would be a “murder in Boston.” The only crime committed on the night, however, was the $500,000 check paid to Toney, more than the base purses of Couture, Frankie Edgar and BJ Penn combined.
JOE SON VS KEITH HACKNEY
UFC 4, Tulsa, December 1994
Whilst not strictly smack talk, no list of ill-fated pre-fight bravado would be complete without Bond villain Odd-Job look-a-alike Joe Son‘s comical 1994 entry. Debuting at UFC 4, Joe Son brazenly decreed himself to be “impervious to chokes” thanks to years of “breathing techniques.” Whether the techniques extended beyond holding his breath under the bath water is debatable. Less than three minutes into his fight with Keith ’The Giant Killer’ Hackney and Son had tapped due to a . . . wait for it . . . a choke; and a soft one at that. To compound his misery further Son also took six – then, perfectly legal – punches to the groin that no amount of breathing techniques could prepare any man for.
