When the towers fell on 9/11, Tim Kennedy left his relatively cushy life of MMA training to sign up for a greater good. He entered the special forces and became a decorated sniper, earning multiple awards. In 2009 he made his full-time return to MMA, challenged for the Strikeforce middleweight title, and then became a top-ranked UFC contender. He hasn’t fought since the infamous “stoolgate” incident against Yoel Romero in 2014, but Kennedy hasn’t stayed out of the public eye.
On the History Channel, Kennedy is part of the Hunting Hitler team, and now he’s debuting his show, True Patriot Movement, on Alex Jones’ controversial Infowars website.
So, you hold wins over two current UFC champions right now.
Is there anyone in the UFC that can say that?
Maybe? I don’t know. But you see that and it’s been almost two years since you fought…
I know.
Are you going to come back?
Uh, yeah.
Soon? On a big card?
Yes, it will. I don’t think you’ll get a bigger card than the one I’m gonna be on.
Well, UFC 200 is only a month away, but 202 with Diaz/McGregor and Madison Square Garden is coming in November, so maybe we’ll see you on one of those. Getting right to it — now that Bisping’s champ, how do you feel?
When Robbie won the title, Robbie gave me a fight, for 15 minutes I had to work to beat him up. Even though I won all three rounds, a 30-27 fight card, he blasted me with an uppercut that left me pretty bloody for the rest of the fight. I think broke records for the number of takedowns scored in a fight, the number of position advantages taken in a fight, and the number of strikes landed comparatively in a fight, a middleweight fight. And that’s to the now champion, so that kind of baffles me. Especially when Mike and I fought, there was a lot of sincere trash talking. It wasn’t promoting, it wasn’t self-promoting, it wasn’t trying to do Dana White a favor trying to build a fight, we did not like each other. We don’t like each other. We have found some common ground regarding some other steroid users, we grew up and fought in the peak of our career when everybody was using steroids except me and probably Michael. So, I’m just baffled now that a guy that I effortlessly beat, both of us being clean athletes, is now the champ.
On two weeks notice against Luke Rockhold, and you fought him! A weird triangle.
When you get up to the top, when Jacare and I fought, Yoel and I fought, Luke and I fought, I still believe I beat Jacare, it was close, and the judges got it wrong. Luke and I was… I tip my hat to him, it was very very close, I think it was a majority decision or split decision, I would tip it because I wasn’t on my best game. Like, alright, Luke maybe won that one. And that night, when Luke showed up to fight Michael, he showed up to showboat as a champion, Mike showed up to fight. Just like Nate Diaz did to Conor, Conor showed up to demonstrate how good he was and Nate Diaz showed up to a Stockton brawl. You could tell that from the moment that fight started, Michael Bisping had no other intention besides throwing the hardest punches he’s ever thrown in his career.
Are you still pissed off about Yoel Romero?
I’m never gonna like the guy. He’s a cheater in the ring, he’s a cheater outside of the cage, he cheats at every opportunity. For some weird reason, he always gets away with it. When he cheated against my teammate Derek Brunson, it was blatant. I would’ve disqualified him and given him a loss in the cage right then and there. Instead, he gets a point deducted and sent back to his corner and comes out and get the TKO win. When he fought me, without a doubt, by every single person in attendance, he lost that fight, except John McCarthy, who thought, for some reason, he’s gonna give him as much time as he needs on the stool and then let him fight. And then he tests positive for steroids and then his sentence is reduced and he’s pretty much let off with a slap on the wrist for I don’t even know what reason. So, even though he gets caught cheating every time, he gets away with it! I kinda don’t understand what’s going on. I want somebody to explain this to me.
It’s not like he’s even that big of a star.
No! He sucks! He’s not well-spoken, he loves Gay Jesus, he’s homophobic, he’s racist, he’s obviously a steroid user, he’s a cheater in the cage, why would you give that guy a bye?
Maybe he’s the luckiest man in the world?
I guess so. I thought Conor was, the Irish luck, but obviously not.
The Cuban luck, I guess. Everyone knows there are/were a lot of steroid users. When USADA came in, things kind of changed on the horizon, but you really feel that the majority of fighters were using?
I think I’ve always said 75 to 80 percent. I’ve said it over the past… I’ve been in for 15 years and I’ve said that for 15 years. I’ve called out teams, I’ve called out fighters, nobody listened and lo-and-behold they all start testing positive. So, as you see 37-year-old guys way post-peak now winning championships, you can recognize and appreciate that there was a major performance drug problem.
I’ve interviewed Luke Rockhold and he’s always said the one thing about Bisping and himself is that they’re both clean. It’s a small group of people, but it’s interesting to hear.
I’m not saying he’s… I’m just saying that I don’t know that he cheated, which is way different. I know which of my teammates are clean and which of my teammates aren’t clean. And I know which of my training partners here in Texas use and which ones don’t. I know I don’t. I’m not a training partner of Luke, so I’m not saying… You know.
Alex Jones, True Patriot Movement. How did this come about?
It’s 2016, year of some big election, we got a bunch of really, really crappy politicians that are gonna be president, one of them. Like, just thinking about the fact that the two people running for president, one of them is actually going to be president. That makes me want to cry. One I completely hate and think should be in jail, the other one is an egotistical dick that borderlines on ethnocentric politics, an asshole that is about to have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of the United States. That makes me really sad.
Alex reached out to you? Or are you looking for your own soapbox?
I’ve never been looking for a soapbox. The people that are close to me, the people that I spend most of my time with, they’re all really like-minded people. Look at my community — the special operations community, Rangers, Green Berets, Seals — while we have worked for the government, we are very staunch… I wouldn’t say Libertarians because Libertarians have such a negative tone to it now, because Libertarians are weird, but we believe in freedom. We’ve fought for freedom, we’ve killed for freedom, we didn’t kill to find weapons of mass destruction, I killed people that were throwing acid on little girls for them going to school. I didn’t go kill people so President Bush and Cheney could have oil, I went and killed dudes that were burning Americans alive.
I understand what justice is and I understand what freedom is and all of my friends do. It’s always been that way, I love freedom of speech, I love freedom of religion, I want my neighbor to be totally fine, for him to be a completely flaming gay guy with his new husband. I will make him a pot cake to give to him at his wedding reception and have “love wins” on the top of it as a rabbi is doing a ceremony for him during Ramadan. Totally fine with all of it. At the moment that somebody tells me I can’t do that I start getting really mad. And that’s what the feeling’s like growing over the past 10 years. Really, you can’t have this type of guns? Only this one state you can have weed? I don’t smoke weed, but if you want to, do it. I don’t care! But nobody should be able to tell me not to. So Alex approached me and said, “I know you have all of this energy about these things. I just want to give you an outlet, access to an audience that would want to hear what you have to say.” I know he says some crazy things, Alex does, and I’ve gotten a lot of flak in the past 48 hours since I released that first video that’s like, “Why are you with that guy? He’s a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and said nobody landed on the moon!” I don’t care what he said. Listen to what I’m saying. If Katie Couric or Anderson Cooper asked me to come on to their shows and give them content every single day, I would do it because that gives me access to a huge population of people that I can hopefully, in some way, plant seeds in fertile soil and those seeds would grow into oak trees of freedom. Alex is giving me that opportunity.
It seems like you’ve been consistently been searching for truth for all these years. Truth with MMA and steroids, truth with Reebok and fighter pay, and not to mention the government. You’re almost becoming a journalist. Is this maybe going to become a career for you?
I go to work for CBS in three weeks. And obviously, the reason History Channel wanted me is for what you just said, this natural draw towards the truth. I freaking hate liars. Big fan of justice. Big big big big fan. Grew up in a household where there was right and wrong, black and white. There’s either good or bad. And that’s how I see the world and it’s so blatantly obvious when people are operating in the black, when people are living lies when they’re standing in front of millions of Americans and lying to them. That pisses me off. So yeah, I’m definitely going to be doing a lot more of this and it’s going to piss a lot of people off because I’m gonna give them truths that they don’t want to hear.
What kind of truths do you speak that you think piss people off? Or know piss people off?
Peaceful ignorance, you know? Would you rather live a dangerous freedom than a peaceful slavery? There’s a lot of people that just kind of want to kick back and just let things happen. Until somebody shows them what their life could be like…do you want to take the blue pill or the red pill? One pill is pretty chill, you get to have sirloin steak and it’s provided for you for free, you get a free phone too and you can even have a FEMA trailer. And then there’s the other pill which brings you into this dark contrast of reality that may not be pleasant and, at first, that’s the awakening. In 1776 when they’re like we’re gonna raise taxes 3 percent, we were like “Not a f*cking chance. We’re gonna kill every single redcoat in this country until we have our independence.” And now we have a tax rate that’s somewhere between 35 percent and 55 percent and we’re like “Oh, well, whatever. Do I get a free phone out of this?” That’s what I’m talking about. If you’re able to, in an undeniable way, give people truths, truths that they won’t want to believe because they want their life to go on status quo, that’s what they’re not gonna like. At first, but it gets better.
When you’re talking about getting the free phones, do you mean the Obama Phone program or are you talking about, in general, consumerist drones?
Both. One is a metaphor, one is a specific example, but both at the same time. It’s like Hunting Hitler. As we’re doing season two, we have some really legitimate stuff that’s gonna come out and that’s not something people are gonna want to pallet. Like wait, there is an actual chance that one of the most evil humans to ever walk the face of the planet walked down into his bunker and lived life until old age. Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear about that dude shooting himself in the face and then watching his wife die from cyanide and then getting his body burned. That sounds way better, than the fuhrer, the guy that killed millions and millions of Jews kicking it in the mountains of Argentina. You know?
You’re on the precipice of changing history. How does it feel to be that guy?
Well, it’s not gonna be any different for me because I can’t do it, I’m not smart enough. The team of dudes that are now part of this, we have some of the most brilliant minds on the planet. I’m not exaggerating, we have brought in some of the most remarkable people in each of their fields that are, for instance, topologists and anthropologists and archeologists to underwater archeologists. We have some brilliant people that are gonna be part of what’s happening in the next four months. And this stuff you can’t refute.
So, I’d like to clarify your stance on government. I feel like people jump on your words out of context or twist you into a character that you’re not. Ruby Ridge and Waco — that’s the type of government that you’re against.
Yes. That is the type of government I’m against. “Are you anti-government? Are you like an anarchist?” No, that’s not what this is at all. I believe in individual responsibility, it’s the parents’ responsibility to educate their kids, and there’s a fine line where right now it’s the school’s and the government’s job to teach the kids, the parents have to stay out of it and the government is gonna tell us how we’re supposed to teach our kids. No, that’s wrong. But I believe that the access to education should be accessible to nearly everybody and that even though it’s the parents’ responsibility to ensure their kid gets it, the government can’t provide that. Somebody has to put down the streets. Somebody has to put up stoplights. We do need to have sensible laws so that my freedoms don’t infringe on your freedoms. But when the government’s freedoms are now infringing on mine, now you’re pissing me off. It’s subtle.
You’re describing both libertarian and socialistic policies. It’s realistic that, “somebody has to put up stoplights,” but we’re giving subsidies to companies while American children are starving…
Yeah, and there are really easy solutions. There really are. People are like “How are you gonna fix it?” I’m like, “Put a two-term limit on congressmen? That fixes a lot of problems.” You take the opportunity where you can have a civic organizer become president or a person who has never had a real job in their entire life and is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars be the nominee for a specific party and those are our options? There’s a problem. We have to get back to the days where we have engineers and doctors and, hell, philosophers that hate government but want to see the best version of it that can exist. Those are the people. Not ones that want to live off the people for the rest of their lives and become billionaires off our backs. They gots to go.
I read the comment sections and I feel like you get a bad rap as a crazy right-wing nutjob.
The easiest thing to do, instead of actually having a conversation or doing some research, is to jump to a conclusion from a stereotype. Right? So I’m white, I’m in Texas, and I was in the military. Obviously, I’m a gun nut, obviously, I’m a Republican, and obviously I’m voting for Trump. Two of those three things are wrong. Yes, I am a gun nut. Like, I’m oppositely aligned from the Republican party. I nearly hate 90 percent of the things that come out of their mouth. I might vote for Mickey Mouse over Donald or Hillary. So I try not to read those comments, but it just baffles me when people so quickly make these assumptions that are not founded in even a gram of truth. They just stereotype and jump to conclusions instead of working. That’s cool.
You’re very much behind the Second Amendment, but why do we need machine guns? A well-armed militia to overthrow the government or keep them isn’t realistic. Wouldn’t the government just bomb us if they really wanted us to fall in line?
No, because they need us to pay their paychecks. They can’t kill us, we’re the ones that pay for them. A disarmed society is a peaceful society and a totalitarian government is the one that controls those peaceful slaves. If you go from Mao to Hitler to Stalin, ever single historical example, when the government’s like “Ok, you guys can’t have your guns anymore.” Bad things happen within the next 40 years. Really, really, really bad things. And it happened like 50 times in history. But somehow we forgot that history books actually have words in them and you take those words and put them together to make sentences, and a few of those together give you an idea, and a few of those give you kind of a story. Those stories are telling us that when governments take your guns, you get screwed. It’s happened every time. Not like once, not twice, like 50 times.
So, it happened in WW2, but the technology is relative. It went from farmers with muskets in a guerrilla war for independence to where we are now. We saw in Ferguson the police marching with body armor and tanks.
When they wrote the constitution they were only talking about muskets. Did you know they had gatling guns when they wrote the Constitution?
Sure.
Like, they had things that rotated on a crate and shot multiple rounds. Like, these were engineers that wrote the Constitution, they understood what’s coming and it wasn’t a blind guess about how they wrote it and why they wrote it. And it was to prevent what happened to us before, which is government completely controlling us.
What do you think about third party?
So, Paul, even though he is an idiot sometimes, he was the closest thing to my guy.
Rand or Ron?
Rand. But definitely the closest, he was nowhere near perfect. So… I don’t know. I really don’t.
Yeah, it’s tough.
The two-party system is so screwed up and stupid. Who was it, Roosevelt? That said that if voting actually mattered they wouldn’t let us do it?
You make me happy and sad at the same time.
Even though hope isn’t a thing because we had two back-to-back elections that used hope and hope is not a plan, I still have hope. I believe in freedom, I believe in liberty, I believe in free market, I believe in a republic, so there is hope there.