Remember Mikey Burnett?

soseji40

soseji40

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I was watching Ultimate Brazil on the fight pass and Mikey was fighting Pat. It has been a long time since I've heard Mikey Burnett.. had to think for a bit to realize who he was. The guy that was on one of the earlier TUF season. I remembered that he was somehow injured and all in the show so I googled him and found out:

On the final episode, Burnett was informed by a doctor that he required major surgery on his neck before he would be able to continue fighting. Burnett opted to undergo the surgery, which would put him out of action for at least one year. However, Burnett had problems with the insurance company and could not get the surgery done. Burnett later filed suit against the show to help pay for his surgery, but has been unsuccessful in getting the surgery completed[3] and has not fought since.

from his wikipedia page..

Man, I kinda liked how he fought. It's kind of sad to find out what happened to the guy after the show.
 
If memory serves the injury was from him ramming his own head through walls. Not surprised the insurance company didn't want to pay.
 
contrary to popular belief he injured it in training during the show, the producers edit it to make it look like it was from the wall
 
I remember Mike from day 1. Had some great fights, including a fight against Miletich, which a lot of people think he won.
 
The were many interesting fighters from lion's den back in the days. Burnett, Bohlander, Pete Williams... They are all away from MMA now.
 
Great fight with Militech? Wasn't that the fight where they held each others shorts the whole time? That fight sucked. Maybe I'm getting it mixed up though. And yea, I always thought he hurt his neck by running into that wall....if it really happened in training and he got denied the insurance because of the how it was portrayed on the show, thats terrible.
 
Ken's Sideburns said:
contrary to popular belief he injured it in training during the show, the producers edit it to make it look like it was from the wall
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Wouldn't be surprised. The way they edited Kos/Tate incident as if Kos jumped him because of the faking eye poke impression is a good example.
 
sangreporsangre said:
Great fight with Militech? Wasn't that the fight where they held each others shorts the whole time? That fight sucked. Maybe I'm getting it mixed up though. And yea, I always thought he hurt his neck by running into that wall....if it really happened in training and he got denied the insurance because of the how it was portrayed on the show, thats terrible.
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No you ain't getting it mixed, it's my bad. The fight wasn't exciting at all, but it was against big name in Miletich.
 
pamirec said:
No you ain't getting it mixed, it's my bad. The fight wasn't exciting at all, but it was against big name in Miletich.
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Yea I thought that was the one....I think it was Mikeys other fight in the UFC that was awesome, where he smashed a Brazilian dude. Regarding your other post about the Lions Den.....it just shows that while despite being a group of badasses, these guys just weren't training right for the sport. All of them, including Ken and Frank, had their careers fucked by injuries.
 
sangreporsangre said:
Yea I thought that was the one....I think it was Mikeys other fight in the UFC that was awesome, where he smashed a Brazilian dude. Regarding your other post about the Lions Den.....it just shows that while despite being a group of badasses, these guys just weren't training right for the sport. All of them, including Ken and Frank, had their careers fucked by injuries.
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Ken is still fighting, though he hasn't been successful. Frank didn't fight a lot, but he is financially successful to say the least.
The other guys: Jerry is a police officer(if memory serves well), Pete William(knocked Coleman out cold) is a chef, not sure what's Mike doing now. So yeah i guess the whole team wasn't doing well to continue their fighting careers.
 
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Mikey Burnett was robbed against Miletich. The scoring criteria was really weird in the UFC back in the day, but an accidental foul by Mikey was factored in to the scoring of the fight once it had gone the distance. Even with that relatively harmless foul, Mikey clearly won this fight. He knocked Miletich down off a low kick counter, took him down twice, attempted guillotines, and landed more strikes from the clinch. Miletich tried to give him a wedgie for 21 minutes. It wasn't a great fight, but the conditioning and strength of Burnett were amazing even by today's standards.

After watching a bunch of old Miletich fights I'm having to reevaluate my old assessments of how good he was. Funny that...
 
Props to a great Gen2 fighter and may his legacy live forever.
 
He had to be one of the few early guys that was pretty high level in both boxing and wrestling. Though I am not sure of his exact credentials, I remember hearing he won junior nationals in Greco.
 
I wish I could...
Thank you.
 
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I used to wreck shop with him and Eugene Jackson on the og Dreamcast ufc game.
 
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