Issue 045

January 2009

Every year, countless outlets take it upon themselves to compile lists of MMA accolades, celebrating the quality and greatness of the sport. But up until now, no one has spent any time making official the worst performances and incidents in the sport. Ryan and Jake, the guys at Fightlinker.com, decided to fix that oversight. Here’s a sample of the nominees from the first annual Worsties Awards.  

Jon Koppenhaver

After narrowly avoiding jail time for assaulting a random individual passing by his gym, Jon blogged about moving to the Philippines where he could live as an “alpha male” and attack whomever he pleased. When a pro wrestling organisation cited trademark infringement to bar Koppenhaver from using ‘War Machine’ as his nickname, he decided to skip a court battle and had his name legally changed. To War Machine. Yes, War Machine. 

That wasn’t the end of Koppenhaver’s bid for dumbest fighter. Upon hearing of Evan Tanner’s demise in the California desert, Koppenhaver once again turned to his blog and wrote a scathing article on the UFC’s pay scale and how it had brought Tanner to kill himself. The final straw was when Koppenhaver refused a fight from the promotion because he felt the opponent wasn’t high profile enough. The UFC released him the next day.  

Jesse Taylor

Coming into the seventh season of The Ultimate Fighter, Jesse Taylor was a pick for making it into the finals. Jesse did fight his way to the finals – only to get kicked out of the competition the day after the show’s filming wrapped. This wasn’t the only incident he was involved with on the show: during an especially rough night of drinking, he urinated himself on camera and then had to be physically stopped from drowning himself in the house’s hot tub.  

Once out of the house Taylor went on a drunken rampage on the Vegas strip, kicking the window out of a limousine and accosting females at a casino, drunkenly bragging of his UFC status. For this, Dana White kicked him out of the finals, but Taylor was allowed back into the organisation a few months later. Taylor didn’t exactly make the best of the opportunity – leading up to his fight he drew fire for criticising Quinton Jackson following the former light heavyweight champ’s breakdown. A quick submission loss later resulted in the UFC tearing up his contract.

Kalib Starnes vs Nate Quarry, UFC 83

Who can forget the match that looked more like a game of ‘chase me’ than a fight? Kalib Starnes ran himself out of the UFC by spending three rounds stuck in reverse, constantly backing away from his opponent. To his credit, Quarry did his best to corner Starnes but, in the end, gave up trying to engage and spent the final minute of the bout mocking his foe.

Paulo Filho vs Chael Sonnen, WEC 36

The first time these two met resulted in one of the best fights of the year. Those expecting more of the same were disappointed by the rematch, where a seemingly disoriented Paulo Filho refused to engage and spent half the match muttering in Portuguese to an invisible listener. The crowd turned ugly halfway through the second round, chanting obscenities at the fighters for the remainder of the match.  

Standgate

Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock were set to headline EliteXC’s third primetime event until Shamrock suffered a freak cut on the day of the show. Scrambling to find a last-minute replacement, EliteXC pulled the relatively unknown Seth Petruzelli off the undercard and inserted him into the main event. Petruzelli dispatched Slice in just under 15 seconds – and if destroying the promotion’s cash cow wasn’t bad enough, Petruzelli then went onto a radio show and implied that EliteXC management had paid him extra to keep the fight standing. A preliminary investigation cleared EliteXC of any wrongdoing, but the ensuing scandal resulted in the falling apart of a proposed buyout of the promotion by their television partners. Two weeks later, the promotion shut down due to lack of funding.  

The Ultimate Fighter

The Ultimate Fighter is credited with saving the UFC and making it the powerhouse company it is today, but recent developments in the show’s eighth season have left many to wonder if it causes more harm than good. Junie Browning is the posterchild for unsportsmanlike conduct, his behaviour worse than any fighter in the house to date.  

Also, a prank war in the house quickly escalated from freezing underwear to fighters urinating on each other’s pillows and booby-trapping food with bodily fluids. Whether fans will continue to buy into such gross-out antics remains to be seen.