5 Fighters Who Threatened To Kill Their Opponents

Benny A. King

The Sport of Mixed Martial Arts is very young. In order to be accepted and recognized many of the rules were modelled hoping to avoid catastrophic outcomes. In fact the UFC would effectively even pay off former fighters to not talk about debilitating repercussions that come from the life of fighting. Just ask Spencer Fisher.

But with the growth of the UFC and rivaling promotions, the need for fighters to differentiate from others and market themselves grows ever larger.

Today we’re revisiting the 5 shocking cases of fighters threatening to murder their opponents.

Just last week after a serious of – frankly strange threats – fighter Sean Strickland finally explained just why it is that he’s so over the top. He comes from an abusive household where his father would often threaten to kill his mother.

In this article we’ll be taking a look at some of the fighters that threatened to kill their opponents.

Sean Strickland is one of those people who is either doing method acting for a Dexter revival or he might be slightly unhinged. For Strickland, saying he wants to kill his opponent is becoming an every day thing. From wanting to kill former training partner Uriah Hall to former strikeforce champion Luke Rockhold.

 

Conor McGregor to Tony Ferguson

Once two of the biggest draws in UFC’s most stacked division are now struggling to get one in the win column. McGregor, who is having a particularly turbulent time in his career threatened a number of people – most notably Ferguson. During the height of their career the two shared a manager and were pretty mild to one another. But the tides have since turned and just this past month Ferguson levied accusations of HGH use at McGregor’s doorstep.

Ferguson’s accusations certainly reflect a certain change in McGregor’s appearance. Once a flyweight can now barely make lightweight and instead prefers weighing in at welterweight.

These accusations were enough to get McGregor to go ballistic – in a since deleted tweet storm Notorious threatened to kill Ferguson in the octagon.

“Me and you are fighting one day mate and I gonna end your life in there full of it. Sauce. Money. Power. I already won all the belts and the money in this game I just wanna kill one of yous rats in there now it’s the only thing left for me to do. And Watch me do it. Only on PPV.”

For our next threat we rewind back to UFC 178. On the card then were McGregor and Poirier who were about to fight for the first time – and a light heavyweight fight featuring champion Jon Jones and contender Alex Gustafson. But as luck would have it Gustafsson was forced to withdraw with a knee injury. He was to be replaced by Daniel Cormier. While McGregor would go and beat Poirier – Cormier and Jones would go on to have a brawl at the presser – exchange some very harsh words but never actually fight because Jones would go on to withdraw with an injury and the fight would get moved to UFC 182.

Jon Jones let the atmosphere get the better of him when he fought Daniel Cormier at UFC 178 presser.

“I would literally kill you if you spit in my face. Literally kill you. I’m not saying I would fight you, I’m saying I would kill you if you did some stupid s*** like that.”

 

For our next incident we rewind back to when Frank Mir fought Brock Lesnar.  While their rivalry is legendary and most people remember the outcome – most don’t remember that Mir expressed his wish for Lesnar to perish in the octagon. While speaking with WXDX-FM, Mir was openly hateful to his opponent and said he wanted Lesnar to become the first person that dies due to octagon related injuries.

“I want to fight Brock Lesnar. I hate who he is as a person. I want to break his neck in the ring. I want him to be the first person that dies to Octagon-related injuries.”

For our final entrance on this list we’ve handpicked the threats Conor McGregor directed toward Dustin Poirier during the infamous catastrophic leg break incident.  With McGregor seated by the fence and visibly angry and upset – McGregor lashed out at his opponent and his wife. Once you get over the creepy factor it was kind of sad – former two division champion in the UFC couldn’t even stand but he was yelling out profanities toward his able bodied opponent and his wife.

“In your sleep you’re getting it, in your sleep you’re dead, you and your Mrs, it ain’t over.”

Reacting to the incident on an episode of UFC Round-Up, Felder slammed McGregor, saying:

“You’re on the ground with your leg broken in half at the bottom, threatening to kill somebody to a man who has just dominated you twice in a row now.”