Bummer. Jay Hieron must have picked on God in a former life. If you see Jay Hieron loading up a shotgun and aiming it directly at the good luck fairy, don’t be surprised. Dude rocked it in the International Fight League and became IFL’s first welterweight champion. He even defended his belt against Mark Miller with a first round TKO. He was the reigning badass in IFL and literally overnight, the entire organization disappeared. Hieron was left with a giant metallic belt that didn’t really match with anything in his wardrobe so he went to fight for Affliction in ‘Day of Reckoning’. After serving Jason High a brutal first round KO in a little bit over a minute, everyone in Anaheim sort of stood there in silence. It was as if they witnessed the detonation of the atom bomb all within the confines of a padded ring. That night, everyone saw what Hieron does on a daily basis…dude just cleans competition and mops the floor behind him. Jay was scheduled to fight in that mythical event known as Affliction: Trilogy against Semtex but…well let’s just say we all know what happened with that (pretty sure I stubbed my toe kicking that dead horse). Hieron was out a paycheck and had no organization to fight under. UFC propositioned Hieron to sign with their promotion but Hieron, who just signed with EA Sports MMA, refused their offer and instead chose Strikeforce instead. Hieron’s decision was primarily based on an instant title shot Strikeforce offered him against Nick Diaz. The universe was finally aligned to give Hieron what he deserved and…the universe decided to urinate on his future once again. Diaz intentionally missed the CSAC drug test forcing him to drop out of the fight and the title shot scheduled for Hieron was demoted to a non-televised regular welterweight bout. That night, Hieron got drunk off his ‘I’m a complete badass’ potion (you can only get it at Xtreme Couture) and won a convincing unanimous decision over his opponent Jesse Taylor.
Alright, everything seemed to be squared away for a title shot. It seemed as if Jay Hieron has redeemed all of his ‘Bad Luck’ coupons. Not entirely. Dude got shafted for a title shot when his agent, Ken Pavia, turned down a fight with Marius Zaromskis because ‘he didn’t think his name was big enough’. Damn. Instead, Strikeforce pairs together the Dream Welterweight GP champion with Nick Diaz for the Strikeforce welterweight title which was held this past weekend. Strikeforce squared off Jay Hieron with Joe Riggs for a fight that was supposed to be televised but was bumped to an undercard when Wes Sims decided to step up and face Bobby Lashley. Jay Hieron was relegated to an non-televised, undercard bout…again. EA Sports tried to ‘white knight’ it by broadcasting the Joe Riggs vs. Jay Hieron fight on their site as a live webstream. Their intentions were noble, but it was a complete friggin disaster. The only thing the world saw was a grey loading box repeat every 60 seconds. With this past weekend’s fight, Jay Hieron becomes a free-agent and Ken Pavia says that he could go to the UFC:
He has an exclusive negotiating period with Strikeforce, but beyond that he is, he has no more fights left on his deal. There’s an exclusive negotiating period, and then there’s also a right to match, which is pretty standard in the industry at this point
That being said, he’s not unhappy with Strikeforce. I mean he’s unhappy he hasn’t made television and it affects his sponsorship money. He’s unhappy that he didn’t get to fight for the title shot, but we also recognize that it’s not all Strikeforce’s fault. There are a lot of different issues that come into play, so it’s not to say we wouldn’t have issues if we were in the UFC, or with a Japanese organization.
At this point, if a stray asteroid hits Jay Hieron’s car later today it would pale in comparison to the amount of bad luck this dude has endured over the past few years. [Source]
