Cowboy Cerrone in very public split with Jackson Wink MMA
Mike Winkeljohn: [Donald Cerrone] has not, from what I can remember in the last 10 years, ever helped anybody out with their own camp. He’s as narcissistic as they come.”
Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone appeared recently on the JRE MMA Show, and leveled harsh accusations against two of the most respected coaches in the sport’s history, Jackson Wink MMA Academy owners Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn. Although there are differences of longstanding between the fighter and the camp, the immediate cause of the rift was a decision by Winkeljohn to train Mike Perry, a more recent member of Jackson Wink, to fight Cerrone at UFC Fight Night 139 on November 10, at Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
Perry joined Jackson-Wink this year, while Cerrone has been associated with the gym for over a decade. However, Cowboy has for years primarily trained at his own facility at his BMF Ranch, something he said he started when Jackson Wink began to go downhill. When Perry called him out, Cerrone was offended, and asked that ‘Platinum’ Mike not be allowed to train at the facility for the fight.
(Winkeljohn called me and) says, ‘You know what, I thought about it and if we don’t have Perry, then I don’t get paid, and I need to get paid for this,’ said Cerrone, as transcribed by Steven Marrocco for MMAjunkie. Basically tells me I’m no longer welcome in the gym.
Didn’t have the f***ing balls or the backbone to say it to my f***ing face when I was right there with them.”
Coach Greg Jackson agreed to coach Cerrone at the BMF Ranch facility, which is some 30 miles away.
He’s like, ‘Yeah, we’ll come to the ranch and sort this out,’ said Cerrone . I’m like what the f*** are you talking about? You tell me I can’t come into the Jackson Wink gym, but you’re going to back door and come to my house, and we’re going to train to fight me while Perry’s at the gym. You see everything he does, and then you come train me? Not to mention you’re holding classes and he’s watching. You might not be training him to beat me, but there’s a lot of people there that have trained with me for f***ing years.
Cerrone says Jackson has not been deeply involved with the gym for several years, and argues that Winkeljohn, drove that place in the ground, turning the facility into a puppy mill.” Cerrone argues that the gym was once an elite facility, and is now an open mat where you can pay a fee and be on the floor with world-class talent.
Not only can someone just ring the doorbell and train, but if you’re a coach, you can just coach the class, said Cerrone. It’s that asinine. I see a new striking coach, wrestling coach, or jiu-jitsu coach in there twice a week probably.
[Chad Smith] is our wrestling coach. He’s terrible. He’s f***ing god awful terrible. He watches videos on YouTube and tries to teach people things that don’t even f***ing work.
Winkeljohn said Cerrone is not unwelcome at Jackson Wink, but said Cowboy’s BMF ranch has long pulled coaches and fighters from the headquarters, while contributing precious little.
Loyalty is two sides, said Winkeljohn to Marrocco. ‘Cowboy’ is not loyal to anybody in the gym. He’s on his own. He does his own thing. He has not, from what I can remember in the last 10 years, ever helped anybody out with their own camp. He’s as narcissistic as they come.
I put up with it for a long time because Greg has the biggest heart in the world. He’s like my little brother. But at the same time, it was causing division. And by the way, of the teams that went out there, I think it’s 100 percent of people lost, because ‘Cowboy’ wants to do what he wants to do on his timeframe, and it didn’t work for the fighters that train out there at the gym. So that made our percentage look bad, because we lost a lot of fights because of it.”
I’m so much happier now that I got rid of the division in my gym – somebody that doesn’t want to help others and wants to do his own thing.”
If I suck so bad, he absolutely would want to fight Perry. I hope he doesn’t back out of the fight now because I suck so bad.
What would ‘Cowboy’ do if it was his gym? Well let me think. If I wanted to go into his gym use it when I wanted to, not be respectful, not help others, pull people and coaches away from the gym, and do things for myself, and then tell the new gym not to work with this person they’ve been working with because it’s all about yourself, what would ‘Cowboy’ do? I know what ‘Cowboy’ would do: The same thing I did, and that was basically, ‘Sorry kids, f*** that.’