The former Jon Koppenhaver, who, in Chad Johnson-like fashion, has legally changed his name to "War Machine" has been released from his contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championships according to mmajunkie.com.
The reasons for Mr. Machine's release apparently center around a blog post he made regarding the recently deceased Evan Tanner and for turning down a fight because he felt his opponent was not as well known as he would have liked.
Unfortunately for War Machine, his name doesn't resonate with enough fans for him to bring about such a grievance.
All of his popularity was derived from his stint on the Spike TV reality show, "The Ultimate Fighter," where he lost his only fight on the show and looked bad doing it. While on TUF, he was accused of possessing a lack of confidence, refusing to listen to coaches and just having a bad attitude.
Koppenhaver, War Machine, whatever you want to call him, was able to save some face on the TUF season six finale when he defeated cast mate Jared Rollins via TKO at 2:01 in the night's Fight of the Night. Rollins had War Machine mounted and was raining down punches when an exhausted Koppenhaver was able to reverse positions on Rollins and land some punches of his own before the referee stopped the fight.
The UFC is going to miss War Machine like it would a toothache. It is laughable that a guy with a 5-2 pro record, according to sherdog.com, and a 1-1 record in the UFC would have the audacity to pick his own opponents. Considering he would likely have been relegated to the untelevised, undercard portion of any UFC card he would appear on, what should he care who his opponent is? He should be more concern with getting some wins inside the octagon, because unless you're Brock Lesnar or a late replacement, you are not going to get on the main card with a 5-2 record when your five wins came against fighters that are a combined 18-28. In fact, had he accepted the proposed fight with Brandon Wolff and won, he could build on that victory and inch his way towards the televised portion of the fight card.
Instead, it looks as though Koppenhaver is going to have to hit the regional circuit again and start over with his career.
In other TUF-related news, I recently conducted an interview with season eight participant Shane Primm, a former MTSU student and Murfreesboro, Tenn. native. Primm now lives in Tampa, Fla. and trains at Gracie Tampa with renowned trainer Rob Kahn.
Primm is the fourth fighter from Gracie Tampa to appear on TUF. Allen "Monsta Lobstah" Berube, Matt Arroyo and Brandon Sene each appeared on the fifth, sixth and seventh seasons, respectively.
When I write my article for Sidelines, I will post a link for anyone interested.
Also, here's the link to the story on mmajunkie.
http://mmajunkie.com/news/5275/war-machine-ufc-cut-me-over-declined-fight-evan-tanner-comments.mma
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