Striking coach Mike Winkeljohn has been a target of criticisms, as of late. The biggest one came from one of his former fighters Donald Cerrone, accusing Winkeljohn of turning the Jackson-Wink Academy into a “puppy mill” and allowing “random bums off the street” to spar with anyone in the gym.
Winkeljohn is once again under fire, this time by Jackson’s MMA president Ricky Kottenstette and fellow coach Frank Lester. In a previous text exchange, both Kottenstette and Lester spoke about their issues with Winkeljohn, and how much of a “bully” he was.
Winkeljohn got hold of this piece of information, which he says came off as a surprise to him.
“The bully thing caught me off guard, but there’s no doubt I understand that Ricky wouldn’t like me. Hey, you know what, guess what? I do not like the guy,” Winkeljohn told Submission Radio in a recent interview. “Let me think about this for a second. He ran three schools for Greg Jackson for a while, they all lost money. In fact, our big gym was losing money and was considered the best gym in the world and it was actually draining Greg Jackson’s other resources, but for some reason the manager was driving very, very nice exotic cars and living in a very nice home.
“Something was weird about that. So when Greg came to me and said, ‘look, this place is failing, I’m gonna have to close the doors,’ I said, ‘I got an idea, I’m just not taking that guy with me,’ and that being Ricky Kottenstette. So he’s no longer out of our gym. And there’s some people that are unhappy with me I guess. I guess that I’m a jerk in that I expect people to show up on time, work hard and not steal.”
As for Lester’s sentiments, Winkeljohn says he was not at all surprised.
“You know, Frank is very volatile. He’s up and down. He’s basically bipolar that way,” Winkeljohn said. “Love him to death, you know, he’s one of those guys that I’d given him a second chance after he didn’t want to fight anymore because he was breaking the rules per se when he was fighting, so he wasn’t allowed to fight for us anymore. But I said, you know what, I want to give you a chance Frank, I want to turn you into a coach. He’s actually an independent contractor where I take actually zero of the dollars he earns working with the fighters in the gym.
“Unlike if you went to work for any other business, they would take a percentage,” Winkeljohn explained. “So I’m trying to help him out. So that’s surprising because I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, other than give him 100 percent of the money that people pay, which is unheard of. Everyone thinks I’m an idiot for doing that, but I did that as an opportunity for some of the fighters. So yeah, I’m a little surprised at what he said.
“There’s no doubt about it, I gave him the opportunity to work with some of the best fighters in the world with not much experience, and yeah, there you go. I don’t know what I can do to him, other than the fact and say, ‘hey, this is it. It’s my gym, my rules’. And they’re not that tough. It’s basically, show up on time, don’t steal and do your job. And people might think I’m crazy for that, but you know, the only other choice is to become the Federal government and give people welfare, and that’s not what I’m all about.”
Overall, Winkeljohn is unbothered by the criticisms that are being hurled at him.
“What’s funny is that I don’t even look at the internet, so I don’t even know what’s going on. People come tell me, they come running to me to tell me, but I could care less,” he said. “I see it as we’re very successful, people want to take us down, they’re jealous of our success. And so I expect more and more of it to come in the future.
“I’m doing great, man. I love my job, I’m going to go in now and work with Jon Jones. I’m real excited about the future and I’m so glad I’m not doing anything else for a living.”
Winkeljohn sided with Mike Perry through the gym drama with Cerrone. “Platinum”, however, is now hesitant to have Winkeljohn in his corner again, stating they “don’t click” and that he prefers working with Lester more.