The US Secret Service visited Jacob Volkmann

[VCURamFan]

Moments after Jacob Volkmann handed Antonio McKee his first loss in nearly seven years, Ariel Helwani cornered him with a microphone backstage at UFC 125. Unlike us, Helwani doesn't need to use thorazine-tipped darts to sedate fighters in order for them to talk. After Volkmann commented on his win over McKee, he also decided to throw a few verbal overhand-rights towards our US president, Barack Obama. Before last weekend, our government had no idea who Volkmann was, but according to a recent tweet (twat?) from Nik Lentz, the US Secret Service visited Jacob Volkmann on January 4th 2010 to discuss his recent statement that he would like to 'knock some sense' into Obama. [Source]



"It happened on Tuesday, I was coaching youth practice, and then two guys came up and one of the other coaches that was helping me out, they said there was a cop and another guy out there waiting for me,” Volkmann said. "I went out there and the guy introduced himself and said he was from the Secret Service and he wanted to ask me some questions about UFC 125 and my quote. He said there were people calling in to D.C. telling them that somebody, me, was threatening the President.”

This guy had the whole interview on a piece of paper and it had my picture and everything. He was like 'is this what you said?' and I said, 'yes it is.' He's like 'I want to let you know I'm a little embarrassed for coming here and doing this because obviously nothing happened.' He actually apologized for coming, but he had to come. He wanted to make sure I wasn't going to D.C to hurt the President. The thing is, I got home and I checked my e-mail and I had about 20 e-mails and one of them, one of ladies had actually contacted the FBI and the Secret Service, and she was telling me that she was going to do it."

Volkmann has won three straight fights since dropping to the lightweight division in the UFC. He's 12-2 overall, with his only career losses coming in the welterweight division to Paulo Thiago and Martin Kampmann.

Penick's Analysis: It was fairly obvious that the comments weren't meant as a threat to the President of the United States, but I suppose any comments like that - especially in any type of public forum like a video interview - are going to be addressed by the Secret Service. Still, that seems like an awful waste of travel time and money to send agents out to investigate something that could have been very easily determined by just watching the interview in the first place.

What a waste of taxpayer money! Hidden agenda! What was he supposed to be scared?!! GRrrrrr.

[Vizion]

Complete waste

I own a home 4 miles from Jacob's hometown and workout at their local gym -to put it midly White Bear Lake is a very conservative community. Not a lot of love of Hussein Obama there

To be fair though it's not like the Secret Service flew in from DC. They have field offices in ever major city in the US so the agent may have traveled, but probably not as far as you may think.

[Llamafighter]

Originally Posted by Chuck

To be fair though it's not like the Secret Service flew in from DC. They have field offices in ever major city in the US so the agent may have traveled, but probably not as far as you may think.

Plus it's their job to investigate every reported threat.

kinda seems like they were doing their jobs .. it's not like they went in there will guns drawn or something (not that i have heard) ...

[JavierDLC]

What did he say?

Originally Posted by Llamafighter

Plus it's their job to investigate every reported threat.

This is impossible. They do not have enough hours in the day to make that happen. They investigate ones that seem plausable. Since this was so public they felt they had to respond. Had he siad it to a buddy over a soda nothing would have came of it. I have made similar comments in my blogs and never have I had a single agent try to pinch me.

[J.B.]

Volkman is dumb for even saying that in his interview IMO.

Weather it had any merit or not, it just seems tacky and lame.

[Irish Pride]

God I hate when people do their job...sheesh...