Kendall Grove walks to the beat of his own drummer. He always has. He's openly mentioned he wasn't happy that Dana White told USA Today that without a win at uFC 96 he might be cut. Grove also suggested to a Hawaiian newspaper that being axed by the promotion it wouldn't be the end of the world. Grove's always a juicy quote.
Now he may have rubbed some of the bosses at Spike the wrong way. According to MMA Junkie, Grove's fight against Goran Reljic has been dumped from the network's free view of UFC 116.
Spike moved in Seth Petruzelli against Ricardo Romero. That seems like an odd choice since outside of hardcore fans familiar with Season of 2 of "The Ultimate Fighter" and those who remember him beating Kimbo Slice in October of 2008, Petruzelli is a relative unknown to the majority of casual MMA fans.
It's the first time he's fought for the promotion since April of 2007. So what's behind the late switch? Junkie says according to a source at Spike, Grove angered someone:
"The source said Grove prompted the change after the fighter openly criticized the UFC's longtime cable partner and their involvement in 'The Ultimate Fighter.'"
If that's the case, Grove screwed himself with these comments on TapouT Radio (14:37 mark):
"Spike TV pretty much runs everything on 'The Ultimate Fighter.' They could be sub-leasing the UFC name, but I'm sure Dana and the UFC are getting a nice little pay check from Spike but other than that, Spike runs the thing."
In comments eerily similar to what is often said about Strikeforce's Scott Coker and Showtime, Grove question's the network judgement in certain cases.�
"Dana doesn't choose who's going to be on the show, it's Spike executives. Even when I was on there in the earlier seasons, they were picking a couple guys with funny personalities. I'm pretty sure I got on there not because of my good looks, but because I had a pretty good personality. Everything is ratings to these guys. Just like that season where they shot [expletive] inside the fruit...people do that stuff. Why? Because of ratings."
Grove seems to think the urinating in the fruit incident during Season 8 should've been stopped.�
"Is it a health violation? Yeah, but did you see the Spike TV people stop that from happening? It sells ratings and that's all they care about," said Grove. "They could give two [expletives] about our career. They just care about the six-weeks that they're shooting and get as much drama and stupidity out of us. That's all we are to them is cattle and sheep. They way they run things, they're slowly controlling us to be like that."
Cagewriter reached out to Spike for an official comment on Junkie's claims and this is all we got:
"We are excited to showcase Seth petruzelli and look forward to an entertaining fight," said Spike's David Schwarz.
Grove should be able to speak freely about politics of the fight game. But this is a reality check for all fighters, controversial opinions sometimes come with reprecussions.�
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