Johnson defends Strikeforce commentary in angry call
My wife and I had just sat down on the sofa last night around 11 pm and I was pecking…
My wife and I had just sat down on the sofa last night around 11 pm and I was pecking away at a “Where are they now?” story for CagePotato about Jared Shaw, when the phone began to ring. I consulted the call display, which did little to identify who was on the other end of the line, besides displaying a nameless and unfamiliar number.
“Who the hell is that calling here at 11 o’clock at night?,” I wondered aloud.
“You should probably answer it,” my wife suggested. “It must be serious for someone to call this late.”
She couldn’t have been more right.
“Scott Coker forwarded me your email. Where do you get off saying that to my boss? Writing it on your website is one thing, but you contacted my boss to ask him about it. Now it’s personal and you need to be accountable.”
Besides inviting me to hop a plane to New York so we can settle this once and for all, mano-a-mano “on the mat, ring or whatever,” Gus Johnson — who is perhaps best remembered as the announcer who called Seth Petruzelli’s win over Kimbo Slice “the greatest victory in the history of mixed martial arts” — was now also questioning my credentials as an MMA journalist, a career I’ve worked at for the past five years before being hired as senior editor of CagePotato.com
“Do you even train? If you’re as credible of a journalist as you say you are, you can’t take the opinions of people on an Internet to heart, without talking to somebody who knows what they’re talking about — me included. I take jiu-jitsu three times a week. I know the difference between a kimura, an armbar, a reverse armbar and an Americana from side control, because I study it. As far as people saying that I damaged the image of the sport because of what I said about the shit that went down Saturday night, if anything, it was me trying to make an excuse for these idiots going out on national television and pulling what they did after the card was over. It’s obvious that it happens. People don’t need to hear it from me to know that it happens. We’ve all seen it. I state the obvious, and that’s obvious.”
“I take a lot of criticism, but I try my best to try to help promote this fucking sport, when nobody else, including television executives could give two s—- because they think it’s barbaric and it’s filled with a bunch of hoodlums, which is exactly how it looked to everyone watching the show Saturday night. I don’t really care about the ‘growing opinion’, because there’s another side that isn’t going to feel that way. There are certain messageboards and websites where people don’t feel that way at all. The problem with MMA is that these Internet guys ruin the sport because they’re negative 90 percent of the time. I’ve looked at them. if we give everyone a voice, we wouldn’t get anything accomplished. I try to say as many good things about these athletes in this sport on a network level — not on an underground level or a Spike TV cable level or a pay-per-view level. This is actual television and nobody knows if they’re going to pull the plug on this thing. If that happens, then everyone will lose money.”
“My job isn’t to promote the sport. I’m paid to give my opinion and to describe what I see and it’s my opinion that the guys they had Jake fight were supposed to beat him. That’s how I see it. I said it, so I believe it. That’s disrespect. Do you mean to tell me that Strikeforce didn’t bring a former Pride champion Dan Henderson in to beat Jake Shields? Come on, man. I’m also not blaming Miller for what happened. Mayhem didn’t do anything that Shane Mosely hasn’t done, or other fighters who aren’t a part of the main event of the card who get in the cage or the ring to hype a future fight haven’t done hundreds of times before. Floyd Mayweather wins a fight and Shane Mosley comes into the ring as soon as it’s over and asks when you gonna give me a fight, man? It always happens. That’s not a big deal. The reaction from Gilbert and Jake and all these guys was what was the big deal. It was improper, and to be honest, it was shameful.”
