When Ronald Collins fought "Icy Mike" Pesesko in a "Streetbeefs" match in the summer of 2017, it was immediately obvious that Mr. Collins was completely out of his depth. He landed no punches and was at the mercy of Mr. Pesesko the entire time. Subsequent to the match, Pesesko seemd quite proud of his victory (if you forgive us the editorial comment). But was there really anything of which to be proud? A man who works as a personal trainer and who has kickboxing experience would be expected to defeat an untrained, possibly mentally unsound loudmouth from the Internet. Yet Mr. Pesesko has returned to Streetbeefs subsequently (possibly more than once, by the time you read this) to engage in more unregulated backyard fights.
One is forced to wonder about how advisable it is to accept personal training instruction -- as an adult or even as a minor -- from a man willing to risk hepatitis and other blood-borne pathogens because he engages in unnecessary fistfights with strangers. Pesesko, for his part, seems to delight in the press these activities generate. He has appeared on podcasts with various martial arts and MMA figures, denigrating at great length the fighting abilities of... well, anyone who isn't Mike Pesesko.
Pesesko is a former police office whose career was evidently cut short by a single-car accident in which he broke his collarbone. You would think, as a former law enforcement officer, that Mr. Pesesko would have little sympathy for someone with Mr. Collins' arrest record. Yet Pesesko, at a mixed martial arts forum, defended Collins, claiming that it was because Collins was "bullied" by people criticizing him online (and thus, presumably, driven to make threats, buy firearms, and menace people he disagrees with).
Mr. Collins has a long history of threatening the families of those who have criticized him online, as chronicled here. It's not out of the question to speculate that perhaps, just perhaps, the reason so many people are "obsessed" with Ronald Collins, Jr. is because he has, oh, I don't know, threatened to beat them unconscious in front of their children, or burn down their houses with their families inside it. Mr. Collins was previously arrested for making "terroristic threats" when he opined on how he could sneak into a law enforcement officer's home and slit his throat in his bed next to the man's sleeping wife, if memory serves... but surely, it was that police officer's "obsession" with Ronald Collins that drove Mr. Collins to lash out in this fashion?
When you look at the greater picture, a disturbing profile emerges of a small man with a small mind who eagerly beats up people he knows cannot defend themselves from his greater skill and level of fitness. Far from proving a point about mixed martial arts or the delusions of fraudulent martial artists, these histrionics force us to ask a simple question that we must then leave hanging:
Is Mike Pesesko simply a bully?
