Mike Winkeljohn defends Jackson-Wink gym, blasts Cerrone: “He’s as narcissistic as they come”

On Wednesday afternoon, on the latest episode of the JRE MMA show, perennial UFC lightweight and welterweight contender Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone buried his long-time gym, Jackson-Wink MMA in Albuquerque. Cerrone had particularly scathing comments for coach Mike Winkeljohn.

https://youtu.be/GnV7AkGqPVs

Speaking to MMAjunkie shortly thereafter, Mike Winkeljohn defended his gym, and fired back at Donald Cerrone.

“Loyalty is two sides,” Winkeljohn said. “‘Cowboy’ is not loyal to anybody in the gym. He’s on his own. He does his own thing. He has not, from what I can remember in the last 10 years, ever helped anybody out with their own camp. He’s as narcissistic as they come.”

“I put up with it for a long time because Greg [Jackson] has the biggest heart in the world. He’s like my little brother. But at the same time, it was causing division.”

Mike Winkeljohn added that all of this drama has very little to do with Cowboy’s next opponent, Mike Perry, migrating to the gym. It does, however, have a lot to do with Cowboy training at his BMF Ranch. He thinks many of the recent losses experienced by Jackson-Wink fighters can be attributed to their spending too much time at Cowboy’s ranch.

“And by the way, of the teams that went out there, I think it’s 100 percent of people lost, because ‘Cowboy’ wants to do what he wants to do on his time frame, and it didn’t work for the fighters that train out there at the gym,” Winkeljohn said. “So that made our percentage look bad, because we lost a lot of fights because of it.

“If Perry wasn’t at my gym, I’m so much happier now that I got rid of the division in my gym (and) somebody that doesn’t want to help others and wants to do his own thing. It has absolutely nothing to do with Perry, and everything to do with Perry.”

What do you think of the drama between Mike Winkeljohn, Donald Cerrone and the larger Jackson-Wink team?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 8/30/2018.