Jon Jones rips ‘miserable bastard’ Mike Winkeljohn for allegedly ‘harassing’ coaches working with him

[OctoberRed]

Hopes for a drama-free separation between Jon Jones and Mike Winkeljohn appeared to evaporate Wednesday night after Jones went off on his former coach on Twitter.

In a series of messages, Jones accused Winkeljohn of expressing support publicly while doing the opposite by “harassing” coaches who continue to work with him behind the scenes.

Coach Wink gets on national TV and tells the world he wants the best for me, and then behind the scenes harassing the other coaches for continuing to work with me. What a miserable bastard

— BONY (@JonnyBones) December 1, 2021

Jones, 34, was suspended from the famed MMA camp earlier this year after his latest run-in with the law, an alleged domestic battery case involving his longtime fiancee in Las Vegas. Winkeljohn told The MMA Hour he had to draw a line after the alleged incident but Jones could get his life together and return to the gym.

Jones expressed regret over the “heartbreaking” decision, but on Wednesday painted a much different picture of his former coach, who co-owns the Jackson-Wink MMA gym that shepherded him during his dominant years in the UFC’s octagon.

The former UFC light heavyweight champion said Winkeljohn had fallen behind as a coach and had alienated his previous students. He said the coach was simply seeking “publicity” by announcing his suspension and yet was still using him to promote the gym.

Further, Jones accused Winkeljohn of having a double standard by allowing a “convicted rapist” to train with the team.

“Now all of a sudden he has morals,” Jones wrote. “Get out of here.”

Winkeljohn did not immediately respond to a request for comment by MMA Fighting.

Jones added his departure from Jackson-Wink changed nothing in terms of the personnel currently helping him make the transition to the UFC heavyweight division. His career remains on pause as his domestic battery case plays out; prosecutors on Tuesday asked for more time to file a complaint against the ex-champ.

Jones said he expected to return to the UFC in the second quarter of 2022 before his latest legal trouble. He relinquished the light heavyweight belt amid a financial dispute with the UFC over a potential superfight with Francis Ngannou and parted ways with his longtime manager. He recently touted his work with a new camp, Fight Ready, that includes former two-division titleholder Henry Cejudo.

[Marchegiano]

Winklejohn is a guy with a Frank Dux style story that made it as an MMA trainer.

I mean, dude's basically Bart Vale but even less credible. Rafeal Torres is another name that I respect like I respect Winklejohn.


From JacksonWink -

Coach Wink as they call him is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He grew up in some of the harshest conditions the city has to offer. But, his love and his passion for Martial Arts gave him the way out and opened up some great opportunities where he became one of the most polarazing figures in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts.



After teaming up with his friend Coach Greg Jackson they sucessfully run one of the best MMA camps in the world, Jackson Wink MMA Academy.

Here is a documented story from Coach Wink's biography
It was but a momentary lapse in reflex, something that one of the world’s premier striking coaches would catch 999 times out of 1,000 in a routine practice. Probability says the odds were heavily against Mike Winkeljohn losing his right eye during a mitt session on Sept. 23, 2009; less than a one-percent chance, really. However, anyone with deep roots in the fight game will tell you every underdog has its day.

When the man affectionately known as “Wink” felt the toenail of a longtime kickboxing student slice his eyeball in half, his mind began to race - not with thoughts of fear, denial or self-pity, however, but of an impending trip to corner one of his fighters in Puerto Rico the next day. A cut, which was Winkeljohn’s initial self-diagnosis, would surely add a measure of inconvenience to the work ahead. It quickly became apparent that his situation was far more serious than a run-of-the-mill scrape.


“I asked the person that kicked me if it was cut,” Winkeljohn recalled. “He goes, ‘No, coach, it’s your eyeball.’ I felt moisture, and it was all the fluid from inside my eye. It just shriveled up like a little grape; I was in shock, so I didn’t feel it. I saw [the look] on the doctor’s face after she examined me. I knew [it was bad].”

Growing up in Albuquerque, Winkeljohn always wanted to be the toughest guy in the neighborhood for what he would now tell you were the wrong reasons. Now, some seven months shy of his 50th birthday, family, friends, fighters and fellow coaches alike would concur that he is indeed that guy, though perhaps not in the exact mold that a teen-aged Winkeljohn might have envisioned.

Losing an eye can be a life-altering moment for a person in any line of work, much less for someone whose profession requires the right blend of instinct and coordination to keep a group of finely tuned professional athletes at its peak. Many of those closely associated with Winkeljohn would agree that the unfortunate incident of two and a half years ago changed the man they had previously known. In many aspects of his life, they would say, he got better.

One thing has not changed: Winkeljohn is still the baddest man on the block.

“I think he was uncertain [about coming back]; I wasn’t uncertain,” said Greg Jackson, Winkeljohn’s partner at Jackson Wink MMA Academy. “I just know how he is. I knew nothing was gonna stop him - you can shoot that guy 10 times in the chest, and he’d still come at you with a .45. I didn’t have any doubt that he would be working. There’s another reason he’s your hero. Nothing slows that guy down. Things that would have slowed other people down, he just shakes them off.”



It was hardly preordained that Winkeljohn would ascend to any kind of status in the combat sports world. The son of a nurse, Mary Anne, and an engineer-turned-real-estate-developer, Alan, the young Winkeljohn lacked focus in his early athletic endeavors, bouncing from baseball to basketball to track and field at Albuquerque’s Manzano High School. Nothing stuck, however, perhaps because Winkeljohn had been focused on helping out around the house after his parents divorced when he was 12. As the second oldest of four brothers, he felt a sense of responsibility relatively early in life.


As a young man, Winkeljohn won plenty more street fights than he lost, but it took only one humbling experience for him to seek out further instruction in his ever-evolving passion.

“I got beat up one day by a guy who was much smaller than me: a good wrestler who had some good boxing hands,” Winkeljohn recalled, dissecting the fight like the coach he has become. “It made me think, ‘Hey, I better change this.’ I did really good up until that point in time. I had my share of good moments - which I’m not proud of. I think I was doing a lot of things for the wrong reason.”

Winkeljohn’s learning curve would accelerate and his philosophy would begin to change the day he walked into Bill Packer’s gym. Packer was an instrumental figure in shaping martial arts in the United States, fusing the physical elements of American Kenpo Karate with the philosophy and tradition of its Asian roots. As one of the founding fathers of the American Kenpo Karate Academy, Packer used his training methods to guide AKKA kickboxers to numerous national and world titles.


Winkeljohn would become one of those champions, but on that first day he was mostly interested in becoming more proficient at beating up people. The advanced prowess of the fighters he saw training told him he had come to the right place, and while he would get much better at fighting, those skills would be showcased within the parameters of organized competition.

With just four amateur fights under his belt, Winkeljohn went on to amass a 25-7-2 record as a professional kickboxer, including memorable battles with Marek Piotrowski and Coban Lookchaoemaesaithong. In 17 years, he would capture two International Sport Karate Association Championships and one Muay Thai world title. Many of his achievements were aired in the relative obscurity of late-night ESPN broadcasts, then not at all once the network went dark on its kickboxing coverage. Winkeljohn does not care to revel in past glories - “they’re just titles,” he said - but he is quick to throw a playful jab toward his current charges, many of whom have benefitted from the escalating popularity of mixed martial arts.


Winkeljohn began coaching in the midst of his fighting career, with no inkling as to how far the journey would take him. He would not become truly successful until he retired from kickboxing, however. A more narrow focus allowed him to devote full energy to his students instead of himself.

****ing George Dillman over here.

[Anthony342]

Winklejohn is a guy with a Frank Dux style story that made it as an MMA trainer.

I mean, dude's basically Bart Vale but even less credible. Rafeal Torres is another name that I respect like I respect Winklejohn.


From JacksonWink -




****ing George Dillman over here.

LOL George Dillman. I've seen those videos. Guy was credible at one time and then turned into such a joke. Bart Vale is a phony too? I only know his name from that one MMA tournament I saw in the mid 90s that Renzo Gracie won. I liked in that UFC 20th anniversary documentary when Art Davie said that they'd take a fighter at their word and find out if they were telling the truth in the Octagon. Nice. Very few were back then.

[OctoberRed]

LOL George Dillman. I've seen those videos. Guy was credible at one time and then turned into such a joke. Bart Vale is a phony too? I only know his name from that one MMA tournament I saw in the mid 90s that Renzo Gracie won. I liked in that UFC 20th anniversary documentary when Art Davie said that they'd take a fighter at their word and find out if they were telling the truth in the Octagon. Nice. Very few were back then.

I'd pick Rockin to beat Dillman!

[Anthony342]

I'd pick Rockin to beat Dillman!

[Marchegiano]

LOL George Dillman. I've seen those videos. Guy was credible at one time and then turned into such a joke. Bart Vale is a phony too? I only know his name from that one MMA tournament I saw in the mid 90s that Renzo Gracie won. I liked in that UFC 20th anniversary documentary when Art Davie said that they'd take a fighter at their word and find out if they were telling the truth in the Octagon. Nice. Very few were back then.

Yeah dude, ****ing George Dillman....he thinks he trained Ali....



They all kind of have similar stories. There's some level of respectable authenticity to every name I mentioned but they ruin it by being a goofy ****head.

Bart Vale was a pro wrestler in Japan back when Japan was featuring a style of pro wrestling that more closely resembled real fighting. Scripted kickboxing and the like. Bart was made champion in one of those promotions, I forget the name, but he took the videos and shopped them around to get himself into real MMA matches where he'd prove he's actually pretty ****.

Bart Vale had a kick combo KO over Ken Shamrock in scripted Japanese sports entertainment and used the "ko" clip to get a real fighting career.

Rafeal Torres was a guy who used to post on early MMA forums bragging about his 14-0 record. Then he "retired" and became an MMA pundit. He would have lied himself into a decent career too had he left his old lies be but he used his new real MMA fame to get himself a fight. This one is less real, it was match but the other guy was a paid dive. This guy looks **** even on a bag and when he submit the dude he ****ed up, it's not even right. It's like watching a child do the figure four leg lock backward or something.

That said, both those fakes got more balls than Dilly. He never got in the UFC, but he used to get invited.

In general TMA has always had a really bad showing in MMA. Outside of a few specific martial arts they got like worst "masters" a martial could send. Plenty of those Gi wearing dudes in early UFC are real martial artists....they just sucked and make martial arts look really ****. I'm not saying Tai Chi is as viable as boxing, just that Karate and **** isn't as bad or useless as those guys make it look. ... or as stupid as Dillman makes it.

Sorry I'm tired, let me bring that last paragraph in better. It's kind of funny fakes like Bart Vale used a fake fight and presented it like it was real then beat up some real TMA "masters".

[Anthony342]

Yeah dude, ****ing George Dillman....he thinks he trained Ali....



They all kind of have similar stories. There's some level of respectable authenticity to every name I mentioned but they ruin it by being a goofy ****head.

Bart Vale was a pro wrestler in Japan back when Japan was featuring a style of pro wrestling that more closely resembled real fighting. Scripted kickboxing and the like. Bart was made champion in one of those promotions, I forget the name, but he took the videos and shopped them around to get himself into real MMA matches where he'd prove he's actually pretty ****.

Bart Vale had a kick combo KO over Ken Shamrock in scripted Japanese sports entertainment and used the "ko" clip to get a real fighting career.

Rafeal Torres was a guy who used to post on early MMA forums bragging about his 14-0 record. Then he "retired" and became an MMA pundit. He would have lied himself into a decent career too had he left his old lies be but he used his new real MMA fame to get himself a fight. This one is less real, it was match but the other guy was a paid dive. This guy looks **** even on a bag and when he submit the dude he ****ed up, it's not even right. It's like watching a child do the figure four leg lock backward or something.

That said, both those fakes got more balls than Dilly. He never got in the UFC, but he used to get invited.

In general TMA has always had a really bad showing in MMA. Outside of a few specific martial arts they got like worst "masters" a martial could send. Plenty of those Gi wearing dudes in early UFC are real martial artists....they just sucked and make martial arts look really ****. I'm not saying Tai Chi is as viable as boxing, just that Karate and **** isn't as bad or useless as those guys make it look. ... or as stupid as Dillman makes it.

Sorry I'm tired, let me bring that last paragraph in better. It's kind of funny fakes like Bart Vale used a fake fight and presented it like it was real then beat up some real TMA "masters".

Is TMA some kinda tae kwon do? I used to have a Black Belt magazine from 1995 that said if George Dillman was as good as he claimed, he should compete in a UFC tournament. This was after UFC 5. I remember there was a guy Hermes Franca beat by stoppage for a dollar just to shut him up. Then Franca turned out to be a creepo with underage girls. Not as bad as Joe Son though.

[VegasMichael]

Count Dante was one of the phoniest of the phoniest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dante

[OctoberRed]

Count Dante was one of the phoniest of the phoniest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dante

Not more phonier than Frank Dux, good movie though.