For Bryce Mitchell, the 30-year-old MMA fighter with a 17-3 overall record, it was good while it lasted.
The central Arkansas native has enjoyed quite a bit of goodwill from Arkansans since he started his upward climb through the ranks as a late teen, as an athlete at Cabot High and then during his time at Harding University in Searcy, Ark.
With a record a 7-3 record since signing with UFC, the largest MMA promotion company, Mitchell has risen to become the No. 13th-ranked featherweight (145 pounds) and could vie for a title in that classification. He told Arkansas Money & Politics he dreams big – to be the headliner of a UFC card in a sold-out Simmons Arena in North Little Rock one day, and over the next 20 years help make MMA the No. 1 sport in the state. For a few years, it seemed like perhaps he had a shot at becoming a combat sport celebrity from the state whose local fame would be on par with that of former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor.
He did all the things you’d think would get him there: donated $22,500 to sick Arkansan children, wore camo shorts in a UFC fight, added “JESUS IS KING” to his “X” profile, hung an Arkansas Razorback flag at the training facility of his 16-acre farm outside of Searcy, embraced a training method that involved filling up a wheelbarrow with dirt and pushing it around.
And, to cap it all off, this:
That’s some seriously salt of the earth stuff. If not for the following baggage, Arkansans would by and large love it.
The major problem, it turns out, is Bryce “Thug Nasty” Mitchell has over the course of the last year destroyed his mainstream public reputation. The fact he believes the earth is flat and chooses not to wear a seat-belt because he feels he may need to jump out of a moving car at any moment looks quaint besides what he did last spring when he:
- encouraged his nearly 500,000 Instagram followers not to vaccinate their children and just before he complained that public schools don’t have students reading the Bible.
- publicly announced he was going to home-school his son, Tucker, “because I don’t want him to be a communist. I don’t want him to worship Satan. I don’t want him to be gay.”
As problematic as the above statements are, they weren’t nearly as bad as what came out on Thursday when Bryce Mitchell decided to defile very name of “Arkansas” by saying the below in front of a Razorback flag on his own podcast entitled “ArkanSanity”:
Oh, and he also threw this in for good measure: “I really do think before Hitler got on meth, he was a guy I’d go fishing with. He fought for his country.”
To be clear, this is bat-shit crazy. The kind of stuff that makes Jake Bequette look like the second coming of Mr. Rogers.
Dana White, the CEO of UFC, would agree. “I’ve heard a lot of dumb, ignorant s*** in my day, but this one’s probably the worst,” White said on Thursday. “Hitler is one of the most disgusting and evil human beings to ever walk the face of the earth, and anyone who tries to take an opposing position is a moron.”
Just in case you don’t fully grasp what White thinks of Bryce Mitchell, he added this: “I think he’s probably one of the dumbest, literally one of the dumbest human beings. Let’s not forget, this is a guy who took a drill through his nut sack…”
White, apparently, isn’t going to punish Mitchell. Free speech and all that. Which is fine. This isn’t Nazi Germany, after all.
In the 1940s, that insidious threat to democracy worldwide was put down by the U.S. among other Allied forces. With a comment like this, it’s like Mitchell is “too stupid to realize that he’s insulting our military and the very freedoms he’s afforded today,” as Reddit user __Reed__ puts it. “He only exists and is entitled to a first amendment freedom of speech because the Allies won World War 2.”
Price to Pay for Bryce Mitchell
Down the line, there will still be a price to pay. This should and will cost Mitchell in terms of his dream of becoming a mainstream celebrity in Arkansas. That’s finished. It’ll also cost him in the pocket book with sponsorships. “Somewhere out there is a line that a UFC fighter really can’t cross without the company deciding it would be better off without him,” Yahoo’s Ben Fowlkes wrote. “What White just told us is that advocating for Adolf Hitler isn’t it.”
While that shows you how depraved some UFC fighter-sponsoring companies have become, Razorback Nation is better than that. The endorsement Arkansas fans is more valuable than that of any company. It’s time true Razorbacks wash their hands of the man who has run their beloved team’s imagery through the mud by daring to speak such rubbish in front of a UA flag.
The Razorbacks were already up against it when it came to their national brand. On top of the usual hurtful stereotypes directed toward the state, there’s the middling football program. As well as a floundering basketball program despite the hoopla surrounding John Calipari’s arrival. An announcement of a new seating policy that has the potential to squeeze off the everyday man that Bryce Mitchell tied to pose as for years doesn’t help.
A steep uphill climb awaits Arkansas here in the coming years. It needs to cut some unnecessary baggage to make it.
You had your chance, Bryce, and you blew it. This was the final straw.
It’s now time for Razorback Nation to disown you.
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“He’ll learn that these views are not welcome in this state, in this nation and in this world.” More from Phil Elson here: