Josh Koscheck consistently marches to the beat of his own drum. You can’t blame a guy for doing that, even if he comes off as abrasive and cocky, which is something he’s been accused of his entire career. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. Do we want yes men in our sport, or someone like Koscheck who will speak the truth even if it’s something we don’t want to hear?
In an excellent interview with Submission Radio, Koscheck pretty much laid his whole view on the UFC life he left behind out on the line. Here’s a quick snippet and the interview below:
“Even if I never fought again after that last contract, this last fight that I had, I wasn’t going to re sign with them, because it’s simple – you put 27 fights in, you give them 10 years of your life, you’d think that they would have stepped up to the game or stepped up to the plate and put a job offer in front of me or something to keep me involved with the UFC and the sport,” he said. “But there was no talk of that. And so I decided that it was best for me to move on to Bellator anyway, because Scott Coker is so cool and I started my career on Spike TV and I would like to end it on Spike as well.”
“Look at the percentages of money that goes to the fighters. It’s probably like less than five or ten percent, versus them getting ninety? Ninety percent of the money. Yeah, you know these fighters need to be taken care of. For example if I never got a contract with Bellator. What was my retirement like? Do I have a 401k with the UFC? Did I have a job with the UFC after I’m done? My name wasn’t Chuck Liddell, Forrest Griffin or Matt Hughes, you know? Or Nogueira, you know? I think I’ve done more for the UFC than Nogueira without a doubt. And he gets a job. So where’s the discretion there? Where does it stop? Who’s to determine these types of things? Them. So there has to be somebody that represents the fighters.”
“So I knew he wasn’t stepping up to the plate, because he had gotten an offer from Bellator and he didn’t pick up the phone or have the courage to pick up the phone until, you know, his flop of a Reebok deal came out and that was the ‘Josh Koscheck media day’. And my media day was bigger than his flopped Reebok deal, so he should actually be patting me on the back (laughs). ‘Cause the day Reebok launched was a nightmare. Josh Koscheck was all over the news going over as far as signing with Bellator. So I did get a phone call that day actually from him, and needless to say it wasn’t the politest conversation between the both us.”
