Antonio McKee is Perfectly Capable of Having This Argument All By Himself, You Guys

(Antonio McKee, pictured here with the script he soon plans to flip. PicProps: amam-magazine.com)
Got to admit, when we brought you the news earlier this week that leading up to his UFC debut on Saturday Antonio McKee was comparing himself to Muhammad Ali, Don King and Tupac, we pretty much assumed our McKee reporting duties were done for the year. No dice, P-Nation. Lo and behold, not three days later McKee is back in an interview with Old Dad at MMA Fighting that strikes us as even crazier than the one before. During this latest conversation with Our Former Ben, McKee adopts a strategy of making a point, then immediately contradicting himself all while tossing in the prerequisite insane claims about his own greatness and occasionally referring to himself in the third person. Seriously, when you go third person and it starts looking like you might actually have a split personality? Shit is disconcerting.
In the course of this interview, McKee pretty well talks himself in circles, among other things contending that: Upcoming opponent Jacob Volkmann is either a really tough dude or just some poor sap he’s about to run out of the UFC; now that he’s scored a four-fight deal in the Octagon he’ll either go back to his conservative, decision-oriented game planning or he’ll keep busting heads as quickly as possible; and he’s still morally opposed to hurting his opponents, but will totally do it if the money’s right.
A few things McKee is unwavering about, though: He’ll be UFC lightweight champion by the end of 2011, at 40 years old age won’t be a problem because he’s “made from better stuff than Randy (Couture)” and he thinks MMA fans are barbaric and distasteful. C’mon, follow the jump to find out what a disgusting animal you are.
"Fighting is something I've been doing all my life, and I'm getting paid for it,” McKee says. “It's kind of fun to do, based on the salary, but when I see the mentality of the people who are watching it, they're so barbaric. I'm like, dude, what if that was your mom or your dad or your son out there getting knocked out? How would you enjoy the show then?
"See, I'm back there and seeing these fighters suffer, seeing them with their noses busted, in all this pain, on Vicodin and Oxy(contin). These guys are tearing their bodies up. You know, doing steroids and anything they can just to be somebody. And most of these guys are intelligent and have degrees. It's kind of confusing. You go to school and get a degree to fight? I did this shit on accident. Growing up in the hood and dealing with criminals and crooks. I didn't plan that. It was just an economic thing for me. Mama didn't have no money."
First of all, “I did this shit on accident … Mama didn’t have no money,” is definitely in the running for best MMA quote of the year. Secondly, once again McKee chooses to walk the fine rhetorical line between wanting to get paid a lot of money to fight in front of people, but not particularly liking or respecting those people. Weird, right? It sort of makes him seem like a minimum wage waitress who is working largely for tips. She wants to get a good gratuity from the executive who comes in for a three martini lunch, but she secretly thinks the guy is a pig.
The way McKee sees it, his shiny new four-fight contract should work out nicely with his plans to be the 155-pound champ by the end of next year. Or as he puts it: “Beat up Volkmann real quick, and … we can start moving forward and making progress."
Hmmm, if you’re wondering if McKee really thinks it’s going to be that easy, well, yeah he does. He just hopes all these other UFC lightweights let him submit them ( … even though he says he won’t submit them …) to save him the trouble and spiritual dilemma of punching them in the face (… even though he says punching them in the face is what he really wants to do …).
"I feel sad for the opponents, you know?” McKee says. “I hope maybe they'll just let me submit them, because I really don't want to hurt them. What are they going to do, stop me from taking them down? Stop me from ground-and-pounding them? Stop me from hitting them with the elbows? Come on, you serious?
"Nobody's going to stop McKee from doing that. I'll do that when I need to and just hope they're smart enough not to take too much face-bashing before they're like, 'McKee, go find an armbar please and get this over with.' Because you know I ain't looking for submissions; I'm looking to punish your face."
One or the other. Or both. Who knows. One thing we know for sure: Shit is going to be embarrassing if McKee messes around and loses to Jacob Volkmann.