An MMA Thanksgiving: 2014 All-Turkey Team

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War Machine

There are turkeys, and then there are human garbage heaps. While this guy falls firmly in the latter category and while he truly merits no sort of mention whatsoever, any list of MMA’s worst would be incomplete without War Machine.

After so many years of watching him get arrested, wish death upon the president and, you know, legally change his name to “War Machine,” people had grown numb to the idiocy of The Mixed Martial Artist Formely Known as Jon Koppenhaver. Since his unceremonious release from the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2008, War Machine’s most high-profile MMA moves included getting signed by Bellator MMA, getting released by Bellator without ever competing for the organization and, fresh off a prison stint, getting re-signed by Bellator, whose then-CEO Bjorn Rebney soon had to do damage control. Regardless of any in-cage abilities, War Machine had become a joke -- and not a funny one at that.

Like the stench of month-old leftovers, War Machine came wafting back to MMA’s collective nostrils in 2014. This time, nobody was laughing. Bellator on Aug. 8 announced that the organization had released the fighter yet again after reports surfaced that War Machine was the prime suspect in an altercation which left girlfriend Christy Mack hospitalized. Days later, the MMA world saw exactly what kind of violent, misogynistic criminal we had been harboring when Mack shared photos and an account of the beating she sustained.

Following a failed suicide attempt and a plea of not guilty, War Machine is set to stand trial in February on 34 felony charges, including two counts of attempted murder. If convicted, he could face life in prison -- a sentence which would suit MMA just fine, since War Machine is a concentrated embodiment of so many of the sport’s worst elements.

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