After NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated last Saturday that the league has "moved on" from him, and even XFL commissioner Oliver Luck told FOX News (who else?) that he was "never a viable option," hiding behind the excuse that his salary demands are "way out of all our ballpark" (conveniently assuming that said "demands" have never changed), it is now a safe bet that Colin Kaepernick will never play professional football again.
So where might Kaepernick resurface, athletically speaking?
One strong possibility is mixed martial arts, where many former NFL players have found a haven — ranging from Brendan Schaub and Matt Mitrione, both of whom appeared on the same season of "The Ultimate Fighter," with Schaub ending up as the runner-up in that season, losing in the live finale to the, how shall we say, rotund Roy Nelson — to Greg Hardy, who was bounced from the NFL after two arrests, but only one conviction, which was later expunged (no "innocent until proven guilty" in the NFL!).
How might Kaepernick fare in MMA?
The last time he played in the NFL, the 6-foot-4 Kaepernick was listed at 240 pounds. But "football weight" is one thing, and "fighting weight" is another, so there is a good chance that he could get down to 205 pounds and fight at light heavyweight — and figuring that his reach is in the 80-inch range, he would have a serious reach advantage over the vast majority of opponents he would face. We have seen the damage that Jon Jones, also 6'4", has done with his 84 1/2-inch reach, so Kaepernick at 205 sounds intriguing.
Another key issue is finding the right dojo, or MMA gym, to train at — which specifically means one where he would get the personal attention he would so obviously need. This rules out the "fighter factories" like Coconut Creek, Florida-based American Top Team, Albuquerque-based Jackson-Wink MMA, and San Jose-based American Kickboxing Academy, one of whose alumni, Luke Rockhold, is now doing cologne commercials for Ralph Lauren.
A good spot for Kaepernick could be Fort Lauderdale-based Hard Knocks 365, which rose out of the smoldering ashes of the Blackzilians after that badly-mismanaged gym was forced into bankruptcy in 2016. Dutch kickboxing maven Henri Hooft, who was with the Blackzilians as their kickboxing coach, runs Hard Knocks 365 — and one of its fighters, Kamaru Usman, just successfully defended his UFC welterweight title with a brutal, back-and-forth, fifth-round TKO victory over the garrulous (to put it charitably) Colby Covington.
But what about Kaepernick's age, you ask? He turned 32 last month — but Daniel Cormier didn't fight anyone that anybody even heard of until he was 33, and he went on to hold the UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight belts concomitantly. And a pair of 40-somethings — Fedor Emelianenko and Quinton "Rampage Jackson" — will be throwing it down this coming Saturday at Bellator 237 in Japan, where Jackson has always had a huge following.
And if Kaepernick even got as far as Bellator, let alone the UFC, he would be a pay-per-view gold mine, with all the raw emotion his exploits have generated on both sides of our political divide, which seems to overshadow all else in America these days.
If Dana White could make millions off Conor McGregor, he will make a lot more than that off Colin Kaepernick. All Kaepernick has to do is provide White with enough evidence to prove that he can be plausibly marketed — and if Greg Hardy could do it, why not?
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