There is a lot of bad blood right now between the Jackson-Wink training camp and one Cowboy Cerrone. The basis of the feud is simple. Cowboy doesn’t like coach Mike Winkeljohn and he definitely does not like the fact that he has agreed to train his UFC Fight Night 139 opponent Mike Perry for their clash in November. There have been many things said about the situation and most of them came from Cerrone’s mouth until now. Former UFC fighter Leonard Garcia spoke exclusively to BJPenn Radio and he broke it all down as only he could. Here’s what he said via BJPenn.com…
I watched it all happen, I watched it all unfold. I actually got [to JacksonWink] first and brought Cowboy in, and then he just never left. It worked that way and I played out, my career ran its course and then Cowboy really started blowing up. During the time of him blowing up, the gym really started changing. It started becoming a little more money-driven. A couple things were changing. There were kind of alliances being made behind closed doors. Some of the real tight knit people would kind of have meetings. You see long-time members leave, just a bunch of different things. You could kind of see it happening.
So eventually it was gonna become more of, I’ll be saying, more of a Mike Winkleljohn’s kind of set up. The way he wanted to run things. Understandably, he’s the one who paid the money to have it that way. At the end of the day you can’t argue with the owner. It’s kind of one of those things. Either you fall in or you fall out.
Cowboy decided that he loved Greg [Jackson], he always wanted to stay with Greg, he never wanted to go anywhere, so he was like I’m just gonna kinda just stick around. I’m gonna be here. I’m gonna use Greg to come over to the house and help get me ready for my fights. And [he] was still coming to Jackson’s and using the guys as training partners when he needed them. So I kinda understand their take. I kinda understand the coach’s take. I understand what [they] did, and to me it makes sense what [Mike Winkeljohn] did. He chose Mike Perry over Cowboy because Mike Perry uses him and Cowboy doesn’t, and it’s his gym. That makes sense to me. That happened, great, it worked out that way.
Cowboy really didn’t spend a lot of time there but it became an issue because Cowboy’s telling Greg, well, what if I want to come into this place [again]? At the end of the day fighting is a mental, a really big mental battle. Within yourself. You sit in that corner [between rounds] and you ask yourself questions. Nobody else knows this, but you ask yourself questions when you’re sitting in the corner. When they’re giving you instructions, giving you water, you’re thinking in your head you’re trying to listen to what they’re saying, you’re trying to assess how you were doing in that round, you’re trying to think of everything you did to get prepared, you try to think of different things but so many things are running through your mind. What does [my opponent] know? Why was he confident in this area? Why did he smirk whenever I did this?
You ask yourself every question in the book. So all these mental things are playing out in your head. Now in preparation, if you’re thinking man, he’s [at the gym] I used to be [at], he’s around all the people that I’ve trained with for years, he’s in there with the coaches that have trained me for all these years, what does he know [about me]? So Cowboy just went to Greg and tells him, how about just for this camp, you’re [not] gonna let him train here? On the simple fact that I don’t want him knowing all these things. But if you can’t, I respectfully understand.
It was a number of things. Not just out of respect for him, but man, come on. I’ve trusted you guys for this many years. Maybe I’ve told you guys some things I might worry about if you guys tell him and it’s just out of respect. Give me that. Give me at least that. But at the end of the day with anything else, there are so many driving factors in this sport and money’s always been one of them.”
In the end, of course, JacksonWink agreed to train Mike Perry for his fight against Cowboy, while Cowboy was left to continue his carer elsewhere. It was then that Cowboy let loose his statements about the gym’s coaches.
The coach that’s in there right now, the wrestling coach, I have no idea. I’ve never met him, don’t know anything about him. I know he’s a good friend with Diego Sanchez. I will say this about Cowboy, Cowboy talks trash about a lot of things but the good thing is Cowboy’s just a super honest guy. He gets in trouble for calling it like it is. He doesn’t have a filter, so he says stuff sometimes that gets him in trouble. For instance, on that podcast, what did the idiot say? That he transported drugs into somewhere allegedly? It’s like come on, dude. You can’t say stuff like that. But he’s honest…If he said something, especially something like that, an accusation or something, he usually won’t say it unless there’s concrete evidence. So I certainly believe he has concrete evidence to support what he said. Do I know that that happened? Absolutely not. So I won’t even say that I know for sure or yes, no, maybe. I personally don’t even know the guy.
Wow. The drama is certainly real and Cowboy should be frustrated if the man who trained him is going to train the man he is fighting next. Right? Let us know in the comments what you think.