WEC lassos Cowboy; issues statement condemning remarks

The WEC issued a statement publicly condemning Cowboy Donald Cerrone for statements made in an interview for his upcoming fight with Jamie Varner. In the interview, Cerrone hoped that he would kill Varner. He also used homosexual/sexist slurs in referring to Varner.

Bloody Elbow has the offending portion of Cerrone’s interview:

INTERVIEWER: “And do you feel that maybe your emotions might have a lot to play in this?”

DONALD CERRONE: “I hope my emotions have all to do, yeah, I hope my emotions have everything to do with this fight. I hope they come out…all I want to do is go out there and kill him and that’s what going to get me going that first round, you know, I want to come in that first round and just rip his face off, you know that’s the plan. I don’t want to come in and sit back and let him dictate it, I hope my emotions drive me. I fight better on emotion, ask Leonard, he trains me every day. When I’m hot and some new guy comes in the gym and wants to throw down, that’s when I do my best, you know. So, I hope my emotions take over and I just kill this dude. I hope this is the first death in MMA.”

Cerrone went on to make homophobic and sexist comments about Varner.

Today, the WEC Vice President Peter Dropick issued a statement condemning Cerrone’s statements:

“In a recent radio interview, WEC fighter Donald Cerrone went too far in talking about his upcoming fight with Jamie Varner, and we believe he crossed a line of decency in doing so,” he stated. “We will not tolerate a fighter who makes comments that are not consistent with our company values, nor will we tolerate the use of slurs that may offend any segment of the public. We are aware Donald issued his own immediate apology on Twitter, but we still needed to speak with him about it, and to issue our own statement making our position known.” (via MMA Junkie)

MMA Fighting examines Cerrone’s statement:

…Cerrone’s blunder again prompts us to ask the question, when does it go from fun smack talk to stupid smack talk? Answer: when it gets too literal.

You can say that you want to kill an opponent, or destroy him, or annihilate him, or, as Cerrone also said in the radio interview, “just rip his face off.” That’s all fine, mostly because it remains at least plausible that you don’t mean those things literally. In fact, the more unrealistic and cartoonishly ridiculous the threat is, the better. We all realize that the rhetoric of fight promotion is a violent one, and we’re usually willing to give fighters the benefit of the doubt.

But when you clarify your remarks with an addendum like, “I hope this is the first death in MMA,” well, then you’ve got a problem. At that point we can’t pretend that you didn’t mean it literally, because you actually took the time to make sure that we knew you meant it literally.

Payout Perspective:

The art of trash talk is key in promoting a fight. But, fighters must understand the limits of what they can say. There is a fine line between raw emotion and expressing those emotions into words. Fighters must learn how to hype the hate without going over the edge. For the UFC and WEC, it is important that fight hype stays away from death threats that sound real.

Did Cerrone forget what happened when Frank Mir hoped to kill Brock Lesnar? Mir, a WEC commentator, mysteriously disappeared from its broadcasts after his infamous interview.

Protecting its image, the WEC saw the need to issue a statement condemning Cerrone’s comments. This was necessary since Cerrone versus Varner will be one of the featured matchups on WEC’s next big card on Versus. Furthermore, the WEC would like to be proactive in stuffing any negative press Cerrone’s statements may have. At a time when Zuffa is expanding into different markets and trying to crack the New York market, threats of death made by fighters would add fuel to the Bob Reillys of the world.