Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Unbelievably true stories of crime, corruption, misconduct and greed from the wildly misregulated world of combat sports.

Cody McKenzie hoping to turn luck around with Superior Challenge win over David Bielkheden May 16 in Sweden

Cody McKenzie has given up on his fight to overturn his three-month suspension illegally handed down by the Edmonton Combative Sport Commission and will sit out the remainder of his questionable time out before fighting again four days after the sanction is lifted.

McKenzie (15-7)  is slated to face fellow former UFC fighter David Bielkheden (20-12) on the main card of Superior Challenge’s May 16 show in Malmo, Sweden.

“I don’t know much about [Bielkheden, but I do know he’s going to get beat up,” McKenzie explained to realfightstories.com Monday from his home in Spokane, Washington where he’s been making his rent and bills by roofing since the suspension was levied February 12. To add insult to injury, an envelope containing the TUF 11 finalist’s entire fight purse was stolen from his kitchen table the night he returned home from Canada after the WSOF bout. Because it was a Sunday he didn’t have a chance to deposit the cash he received into his bank account.

His house was robbed again the past weekend.

“My door got kicked in while me and all of my roommates were away,”McKenzie revealed. “Thank God I didn’t have much to steal, but they got my roommates bad.”

As far as his infamous dealings with the often criticized Edmonton Combative Sports Commission goes, McKenzie bristles at the notion that Reid is making a play to head up the Alberta provincial governing body.

“If you’re a fighter from outside of Edmonton, especially if you’re an American, take my advice and stay away from any event [Edmonton Combative Sport Commission executive director] Pat Reid is involved in. If he runs the [Alberta provincial commission], MMA there is in big trouble. I knew they weren’t going to treat me fairly even though I had a very good case,” McKenzie explains. “Pat Reid is a bigot and a coward who wouldn’t even pick up the phone or return my messages. I called him at least nine or 10 times so I could see if I was really suspended since nobody from the commission bothered to tell me I was suspended.

“I was running around after the show was over asking everyone who was working for the commission if I was suspended and they all told me I wasn’t. When I finally did get him on the phone like a week after the fight he pretended he didn’t know anything about the suspension and that he had no clue who I was. He said he’d have to look into things and that he would get back to me one way or the other,” McKenzie recalls. “I believed him. I never met the man and I figured he must not have have been at the show or something. I explained everything that happened truthfully to him in an email I spent three hours writing, with proper grammar, and spelling and punctuation. Then he uses it against me as some sort of confession in my official appeal. I get a long email from [ECSC chair Ron Goltz] a few days later explaining how Reid was the one who actually decided on my punishment. That guy is a liar. He knew exactly who I was. I figured that out after I read the long rant he went on about me being a gun-crazy American.