Anyone remember Jason Thacker?

StewDogg11

StewDogg11

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This gets posted at least once a year. Great article. I feel bad for the guy. He did a lot with a little and made it further than he probably should have. Sucks that people are such assholes. Seems like all the hatred mentally broke him.
 
Yeah, lived/trained in an old abandoned service station for a while; right?

Didn't represent Canada well (sporting wise) and lots of Canadian fighters/fans/reporters/etc... gave him a hard time afterward.

Ace70 V2 said:
This gets posted at least once a year. Great article. I feel bad for the guy. He did a lot with a little and made it further than he probably should have. Sucks that people are such assholes. Seems like all the hatred mentally broke him.
Click to expand...

Yeah, people suck.
Did the best with what he had.
 
Ace70 V2 said:
This gets posted at least once a year. Great article. I feel bad for the guy. He did a lot with a little and made it further than he probably should have. Sucks that people are such assholes. Seems like all the hatred mentally broke him.
Click to expand...

It is a great article, and I'm glad MMAFighting.com took the time and effort to publish such a compelling and empathetic feature about Jason.

As bad as some of the sacrificial lambs on the Contender Series are, nothing compares to Thacker.

He was 100% designated for humiliation. Minimal combat sports experience, physically outmatched by everyone else on the show. They might as well have made him wear a T-shirt that said "Loser"

The show producers weren't just hoping Thacker would be bullied and have a mental breakdown. They were totally counting on it.

And they were right. He was a guppy among sharks on TUF 1. The others in the cast were NCAA athletes and pro fighters. Diego was 12-0 undefeated with every win a finish. Chris Leben had already KO'd Mike Swick in a pro fight before they went on the show.

And then there was Jason, who had been working out by himself with improvised equipment in his barn in northern Canada.



It never occurred to me at the time I was watching the show in 2005. But it was really a scummy show biz set up move by the UFC and Spike TV.

Full sympathies to Jason Thacker. They did you wrong, man.

 
Bos Docken said:
It is a great article, and I'm glad MMAFighting.com took the time and effort to publish such a compelling and empathetic feature about Jason.

As bad as some of the sacrificial lambs on the Contender Series are, nothing compares to Thacker.

He was 100% designated for humiliation. Minimal combat sports experience, physically outmatched by everyone else on the show. They might as well have made him wear a T-shirt that said "Loser"

The show producers weren't just hoping Thacker would be bullied and have a mental breakdown. They were totally counting on it.

And they were right. He was a guppy among sharks on TUF 1. The others in the cast were NCAA athletes and pro fighters. Diego was 12-0 undefeated with every win a finish. Chris Leben had already KO'd Mike Swick in a pro fight before they went on the show.

And then there was Jason, who had been working out by himself with improvised equipment in his barn in northern Canada.



It never occurred to me at the time I was watching the show in 2005. But it was really a scummy show biz set up move by the UFC and Spike TV.

Full sympathies to Jason Thacker. They did you wrong, man.

Click to expand...

great post



I read that years ago, fucking great article. I think the author did a couple other MMA deep dives that were amazing as well. Maybe Andy Wang? Maybe it was a series of TUF Oddities where are they now shit.

Interesting person.
 
I remember shortly after this article was posted Chris Leben either reached out or wanted to reach out and start up a go fund me or something like that IIRC. It was actually nice to see Chris do that given the history these two had.
 
StewDogg11 said:
I’ve always found most of the MMA media to be mediocre but I always thought this article was extremely well researched/well written. I hope he’s doing well. Also lol at him having to spar Dana White in order to fight at the TUF Finale.

https://www.mmafighting.com/platform/amp/2015/3/24/8259545/in-search-of-strange-brew
Click to expand...

What "MMA media" are you talking about"?

ESPN and Yahoo (Kevin Iole) are paid shills.

MMA Fighting and Bloody Elbow do some of the investigative journalism in the entire sporting media.
 
Phisher said:
What "MMA media" are you talking about"?

ESPN and Yahoo (Kevin Iole) are paid shills.

MMA Fighting and Bloody Elbow do some of the investigative journalism in the entire sporting media.
Click to expand...

I dislike a great many of MMAFighting’s current and former “writers” as they are incredibly biased and full of themselves. This however was a great read.
 
Liverkick-king56 said:
Mike Whitehead was the guy in Season 2 that called everybody mentally weak and credited himself as a mental giant while giving up mentally against Rashad Evans.

TUF is fun like that.
Click to expand...

And later Mike Whitehead would be convicted for rape.

ESPN: Mike Whitehead gets prison in sex case

Las Vegas Sun: MMA fighter Mike Whitehead makes no-contest plea in sex assault case

One of the women said she awoke to find her pants down and Whitehead having sex with her in the bed. Although she repeatedly demanded that he stop, he didn't for about three minutes, according to the police report.
Click to expand...
 
VinceArch said:
I remember shortly after this article was posted Chris Leben either reached out or wanted to reach out and start up a go fund me or something like that IIRC. It was actually nice to see Chris do that given the history these two had.
Click to expand...
Did they have some shit? I remember Chris getting picked on by Kos and possibly unrelated is that he is was the Cat Smasher. I'm old and don't remember shit anymore, lol.
 
Bos Docken said:
As bad as some of the sacrificial lambs on the Contender Series are, nothing compares to Thacker.

He was 100% designated for humiliation. Minimal combat sports experience, physically outmatched by everyone else on the show. They might as well have made him wear a T-shirt that said "Loser"

The show producers weren't just hoping Thacker would be bullied and have a mental breakdown. They were totally counting on it.

And they were right. He was a guppy among sharks on TUF 1. The others in the cast were NCAA athletes and pro fighters. Diego was 12-0 undefeated with every win a finish. Chris Leben had already KO'd Mike Swick in a pro fight before they went on the show.

And then there was Jason, who had been working out by himself with improvised equipment in his barn in northern Canada.



It never occurred to me at the time I was watching the show in 2005. But it was really a scummy show biz set up move by the UFC and Spike TV.

Full sympathies to Jason Thacker. They did you wrong, man.

Click to expand...

That was the state of the UFC in 2005. A lot of those early-TUF dudes had no business being in a major org but that’s what the lower-levels of the UFC divisions consisted of because MMA wasn’t widespread in the States yet.

Put guys like Jason Thacker, Wayne Weems, and Gabe Reudiger in todays MMA landscape and they don’t even make it to something like PFL Challenger Series, guaranteed.
 
TheBrownRanger said:
That was the state of the UFC in 2005. A lot of those early-TUF dudes had no business being in a major org but that’s what the lower-levels of the UFC divisions consisted of because MMA wasn’t widespread in the States yet.
Click to expand...

You're not getting it. They didn't put on Thacker because they were desperate for talent. There were hundreds of more qualified fighters they could have put on the show.

They picked Thacker because they knew he was completely out of his depth. They put him on because they wanted reality TV drama. They wanted an untrained scrub who would be crushed by the other fighters, physically and mentally.

They set him up to be the loser.

Here's Stephan Bonnar (RIP) explaining it.

 
TheBrownRanger said:
Put guys like Jason Thacker, Wayne Weems, and Gabe Reudiger in todays MMA landscape and they don’t even make it to something like PFL Challenger Series, guaranteed.
Click to expand...

Reudiger was a level or two above Weems and Thacker, which made him basically around the same level as Schoovover, and not to mention both of them would probably kick the shit out of the TUF coaches who clowned them nowadays.
 
Bos Docken said:
You're not getting it. They didn't put on Thacker because they were desperate for talent. There were hundreds of more qualified fighters they could have put on the show.

They picked Thacker because they knew he was completely out of his depth. They put him on because they wanted reality TV drama. They wanted an untrained scrub who would be crushed by the other fighters, physically and mentally.

They set him up to be the loser.

Here's Stephan Bonnar (RIP) explaining it.

Click to expand...

“They wanted to see someone fail.” Never though of it like that. It certainly made for good TV at the expense of Thacker. I give him credit for staying on the show where so many quit in future seasons.
 
TITS said:
Reudiger was a level or two above Weems and Thacker, which made him basically around the same level as Schoovover, and not to mention both of them would probably kick the shit out of the TUF coaches who clowned them nowadays.
Click to expand...
Eh, true. Titties and Cake Boy had decent enough MMA records.
 
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