The Biggest MMA Turkeys in 2014
Gobble gobble.
I love the holidays. The story ideas are so easy. I can just name a bunch of things I don't like about MMA and, boom, biggest turkeys. And it's a recurring thing, too.
But this Thanksgiving, it's more than a mere gimmick. This has not been a banner year for MMA. Did it have its moments? Sure it did. But were most of those moments bad? Yeah.
With the arrests and the subpar fight cards, being a hardcore fan has felt more like a guilty pleasure (or a chore) in 2014 than it has in quite a while.
Enter the turkeys list. I'm going to do what I always try to do when presented with an opportunity: take advantage. I have to take advantage of this opportunity. So here goes—the biggest turkeys, listed in no particular order.
Dishonorable Mentions
1 of 10
These guys probably don't qualify as turkeys per se, because they're too busy being accused of horrible crimes and everything. So their problems are too serious for them to be turkeys, but their exclusion may give the impression of an incomplete list:
- War Machine (you know what he allegedly did)
- Thiago Silva (domestic violence-related police standoff, released by UFC)
- Anthony Johnson (reinstated by UFC after domestic violence charges dropped; still has questionable history)
- Will Chope (released by UFC after domestic violence in the past came to light)
Diego Sanchez
2 of 10
It's possible that you're so hungry after a weight cut that you lose all perspective.
When lost perspective appears in the charitable version of the story, well, you know you're in for a turkey. And with that, let's bring in our first hero, a Mr. Diego Sanchez.
In the wake of a very bad loss to the very good Myles Jury, Sanchez blamed his performance on food poisoning acquired via some bad steak tartare ordered from a fancy Dallas restaurant during a post-weigh-in feast.
So we're off to a good start here. And we haven't even gotten to the fact that this version of steak tartare had a raw egg in it.
Now add in that the restaurant later issued a statement saying they received no complaints that night, and you have all the trimmings. Should've just stayed on Dolce, bro.
Jessica Eye
3 of 10
In the nebulous world of MMA rules and rules enforcement, it can be hard to catch someone red-handed.
Jessica Eye got caught red-handed.
She got burned playing a very popular game known as Blame The Media. The UFC bantamweight played that game on Twitter in the wake of reports that she had failed a drug test because of marijuana. She didn't deny the failure but insisted she had failed for blood thinners, not marijuana.
But then the test results came out, and she had indeed been popped for pot, which turned her UFC 166 win over Sarah Kaufman into a no-contest.
Jessica, why did you turn my Twitter feed into a house of lies?
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Wanderlei Silva
4 of 10
Wanderlei Silva's retirement should have been a dignified affair, replete with the pomp and circumstance due a Hall of Famer.
It wasn't.
The YouTube video announcing his departure from the sport was another head-scratcher in a series of head-scratchers. That includes his bizarre efforts to avoid drug testing, which earned him a lifetime ban in Nevada.
It's not exactly the way he wanted to go out, one might wager.
Chael Sonnen
5 of 10
Chael Sonnen's exit from MMA was a little less, eh, hectic than that of Silva, his blood rival of the moment, but it was no less undignified in its way.
Rather than dodge drug testers, Sonnen faced the music. It didn't go well. A known TRT user, he tested positive for banned substances in May. One thing led to another, and in June Sonnen announced his retirement.
Sonnen admitted how embarrassing the whole thing was. But don't cry for him, Argentina, or Brazil. He enjoyed a pretty soft landing with ESPN and a brand new podcast, which seems to be taking off.
Maybe this is the turkey who got pardoned.
Jon Jones
6 of 10
Not an awesome year for Mr. Jones.
In September, the UFC light heavyweight champ and the sport's pound-for-pound kingpin revealed that he had lost his Nike sponsorship deal after brawling with challenger and general Jones antagonist Daniel Cormier at a media event.
This spring, a series of homophobic comments (NSFW language) emerged from Jones' Instagram account. Team Jones claimed his account had been hacked (NSFW language).
Oh, and he defended Bill Cosby this week. That's not going to win you a lot of fans.
Bjorn Rebney
7 of 10
Don't look at me like that, Bjorn Rebney. You knew you'd wind up here.
When Bellator and parent company Viacom swept Rebney out—and swept Scott Coker in—the reaction was one of unbridled enthusiasm. Seriously, that was what made the announcement remarkable. Just the unanimous applause that met it.
The stale tournament structure, constant churn of meaningless events and obsession with the UFC combined for a feeling of no-confidence from the MMA community.
It hasn't helped Rebney's cause that Coker's entrance accompanied a new era of optimism for the promotion, anchored by landmark ratings for the Bellator 131 broadcast earlier in November.
No word on whether Rebney is doing any turkey-riding this holiday season.
That Masked Man
8 of 10And now the bad news for Bellator.
Like the MVP quarterback playing with the stellar offensive line, this one is really a team award. But we'll hand it out to the masked man, aka Justin McCully, who resides at the heart of this work of darkness.
In the unlikely event that you missed any of this, Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar had a little verbal spat in the cage to hype their main event at Bellator 131. Part of the pro wrestling-style thing that they did was to bring a literal masked man into the cage.
The whole thing raised eyebrows, to say the least. McCully later revealed the truth about the entire sordid affair.
"There was no real inspiration," McCully told MMA Fighting. "I said to Bonnar beforehand, 'Hey dude, how bout we come out in masks? Or what if I cruise out in a mask, and you can pull it off?' And Stephan said, 'Yeah that’d be great!'"
And that is how the turkey sausage is made.
Jason "Mayhem" Miller
9 of 10
There's a SWAT team at my door. Better live-tweet this!
That was Jason "Mayhem" Miller's thought process, apparently, during his October standoff with some of Orange County's finest. No one was injured in the standoff, but Miller's paranoid and semi-coherent tweets only provided more evidence that this guy doesn't get it. "It" being all of life.
After the incident, Miller started a GoFundMe drive to raise $2 million. That's a large amount of money. Why does he need that much money? To hire a camera crew and get his dog out of the pound, as far as I can tell. As of press time, he hadn't raised very much.
And if you still aren't buying the turkey vibe, just check his Twitter now. He's in the middle of an unexplained, sustained and fairly racist impersonation of Japanese fighter Ryo Chonan.
Get help, Mayhem.
Dana White
10 of 10
You actually thought I was going to finish this list without including Dana White? I'm insulted.
What poultry-licious things did the UFC prez do this year on his path to inhabiting the profile of a modern-day Tamburlaine? Let us count the things.
Back in late 2013, he didn't sign Ben Askren when he had the opportunity, depriving the UFC of one of the best welterweights in the world. But this year, the war of words continued, and in the process White made an enemy of maybe the most outspoken and quotable fighter alive in any weight class. Double whammy.
This spring, White mocked female fighter Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino for performance-enhancing drug use and looking, in his estimation, like "Wanderlei Silva in a dress." In his presser before UFC 172, White literally danced around onstage like a gorilla as a parody of Justino.
This fall, the UFC was forced to rescind a one-year PED suspension originally handed out to middleweight Cung Le because of inadequacies in the lab that tested him. Who would select a lab capable of such chicanery? Why, none other than the UFC. White probably had little if anything to do with this directly, but hey, he's the face of the franchise.
Since that works both ways, credit where it's due: The UFC made great progress on the PED front in 2014. Still, overarching concerns persist on issues like low fighter pay and plenty of other things.
And there White is, every time, ready to bully the little guy and shoot any messenger who doesn't deliver the message he wants to see or hear. That, and not the inevitable problems or growing pains of a young sport and a young company, is what lands him on this list.
The UFC, with White at the helm, is unquestionably the most powerful force in MMA. Some people say that with great power comes great responsibility. You know who doesn't say that? Turkeys.
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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