Professional sex work and professional fighting go together perhaps a little uncomfortably easily. There are any number of fighters who date or married porn stars, perhaps most notably UFC Hall of Famer and Bellator MMA contender Tito Ortiz, who has two children with the best-paid porn star in history, Jenna Jameson. Ortiz and Jameson are divorced, and for the record have never appeared in an adult video together.
Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson
However, some fighters have appeared in pornographic videos, by choice. Other fighters just have cameo appearances in adult video content. One such is a UFC women’s strawweight.
JESSICA AGUILAR
Jessica Aguilar
Like Kimbo Slice, Jessica Aguilar had a non-sex performing cameo in a Reality Kings video. There is a niche in porn for martial arts-trained women competing with each other or with male talent, generally with increasing amounts of nudity, and progressing from a pantomime of fighting to a pantomime of sex.
In one such video, Aguilar shows some of the women how to execute chokes before the women then engage with each other.
For the record, the Mexico-born Aguilar is openly and proudly gay.
“I am not bisexual, I am 100 percent a lesbian,” she told Huffington Post in 2012. “I am proud to be a leader for females across the globe in the LGBT world!”
JUSTIN FRYE
Kendra Wilkinson (l), Justin Frye (r)
The one-time MMA fighter made a circuitous route into a pornographic film. Justin Frye used to be involved with television personality Kendra Wilkinson. Wilkinson is known for being one of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends, and appeared in The Girls Next Door reality television series, which covered their life in the Playboy Mansion. Her degree of comfort in front of the camera extended to the bedroom, where she and Frye filmed themselves enjoying each other’s company amorously. The video was shot in 2005, when Wilkinson was just 18.
The resulting video was allegedly purchased in 2009 by the porn company Vivid, as part of a secret deal that saw Wilkinson paid $100,000 upfront, plus half the profit from sales of the video; the first check was reportedly for $680,000. Frye too reportedly got a cut of the profits, but as is standard in the porn industry, the male performers or “Stunt C****s” are paid far, far less than are the females.
KIMBO SLICE
Kimbo Slice
Kimbo Slice, real name Kevin Ferguson, worked for a long time providing security for the porn conglomerate Reality Kings, which was founded by his high school friend ‘Icey Mike’ Imber. Ferguson was by every account a family man and a gentleman, and has appeared in several pornographic films, but never a performer. He can simply be seen as an extra in the background in several scenes.
Slice first found global notice when a porn site shared video of him and others engaged in bare-knuckle informal bouts in the backyard. That lead to a wildly popular bout with combat sports competitor and Boston police officer Sean “The Gladiator” Gannon, who passed away far too young.
From 2007 to 2016, Ferguson worked as a wildly popular professional boxer and MMA fighter. Kimbo passed away in 2016 at just 42, due to heart failure.
Rest in Peace Kevin Ferguson, born on February 8, 1974, died on June 6, 2016
AARON BRINK
Dick Delaware
Aaron Brink began fighting in 1996, not long after the birth of the sport. He won the IFC (International Fighting Championships) light heavyweight championship in 2001, and fought future UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski at UFC 28.
Brink began appearing in adult movies in 2003, under the name Dick Delaware. He reported that once he got into the porn business he became addicted to crystal methamphetamine, and later other drugs. His struggle with drug addiction was chronicled by the A&E reality show Intervention (2009). Brink and his wife, who was also a professional in sex films, later appeared on Divorce Court (2011).
Brink has not fought since 2018.
DAKOTA COCHRANE
In 2012, TUF 15 hopeful Dakota Cochrane came forward with the news that he had appeared in a multiple porn videos while in college. It was gay porn; and Cochrane is not gay. However, UFC president Dana White was entirely unconcerned.
“He was absolutely 100 percent upfront. When you come on ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ you get drug tested, you have extensive background tests, check-ups … we do everything on these guys,” said White. “Medicals, etcetera, etcetera. He was 100 percent upfront and honest. We’ve had guys come on the show who have not been as upfront and honest and we find out before they ever make air. We were well aware of what he had done and so was FX. I’m cool with it.”
Cochrane was accepted onto The Ultimate Fighter, but did not ultimately win the fight to get into the TUF house. However, he fought on and had a long, successful professional fight career, that is ongoing. Despite not making TUF, he was appreciative of the UFC’s progressive decision to ignore his appearance in gay porn.
“I think it’s a little bit courageous for both of us,” he said of the UFC’s decision to include him on the show. “I could just hide in a hole and no one would know except for the people close to me. And to them, I was upfront. I let them know right away so it wasn’t anything that could come back and bite them in the butt. I think maybe they respected that a little bit. I think some people judge against it, some people will be OK with it. Some people will want me to get my butt kicked, and hopefully others will respect what I’m trying to do.”
Cochrane has indeed earned the respect of the sport. And he and White have through their pronouncements and examples encouraged tolerance, and discouraged bigotry.
“I’ll tell you right now, if there was a gay fighter in UFC, I wish he would come out,” said White in 2012. “I could care less if there’s a gay fighter in the UFC. There probably is and there’s probably more than one.”
WAR MACHINE
The despicable War Machine
War Machine, the man formerly known as Jon Koppenhaver is unfortunately a tragedy and a despicable warning.
He began fighting professionally in 2004. In 2009 he announced he was pursuing parallel career paths, in MMA and in pornography. After rapidly appearing in a dozen videos, he erupted with violence at a porn star’s birthday party, which made him persona non grata in the industry. This was just one of several similar incidents. He had a relationship with porn star Christy Mac that ended when he beat her nearly to death. She sustained 18 broken bones, and a ruptured liver, among other injuries. War Machine was arrested after a manhunt. On June 5, 2018, he was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 36 years for assault, attempted murder, battery with strangulation, and kidnapping.
SYLVAIN POTARD
Sylvain Potard
French MMA champion Sylvain Potard has used his heavily muscled frame to effect in both the cage and in pornographic videos. Sylvain has appeared in heterosexual videos, and has appeared as a solo performer in videos directed toward a gay audience. These gay-oriented solo performances have included several heterosexual MMA fighters over the years. Nobody much seems to care, although it has been used amusingly in the pre-fight trash talk a couple of times.
HAYATO SAKURAI
Hayato Sakurai
Japanese welterweight Hayato Sakurai fought from 1996 to 2013, amassing a record of 37-13-2. The former Shooto world champion challenged Matt Hughes for the UFC title in 2002, losing via KO in the fourth round. He holds wins over Caol Uno, Frank Trigg, Jens Pulver, Dave Menne, and Shinya Aoki (twice), among others. He also fought greats Anderson Silva, Jake Shields, and Nick Diaz, but didn’t get the win.
In 2008 he appeared in porn tapes with a number of women, causing considerable scandal - the women included his yoga instructor, but not even one of them was his wife.
Blame it on his other ring name. He is well known for the “Mach” moniker, but he is also known as “Yasei no Charisma” which means “Wild Charisma.”
While the degree to which Sakurai knew he was in a pornographic movie is in question, others, like Brink, are professionals in the space. On the opposite side, some figures in the MMA world have been filmed during intimate moments without any intention whatsoever of being in a porno. After becoming the most famous figure in mixed martial arts at the time, Ronda Rousey, reported that an ex-boyfriend surreptitiously took images of her nude.
She did not take the illegal act lying down.
RONDA ROUSEY
“Rowdy” Ronda Rousey
The UFC women’s bantamweight champion has previously discussed the ex-boyfriend she dubbed “Snappers McCreepy,” who surreptitiously took nude images of her. The utterly contemptible act led her to agree to be photographed ESPN’s Body Issue magazine - if nude images were going to appear, the champion wanted it to be on her terms.
Rousey described what happened in an interview on the Opie Radio show on SiriusXM.
“The first thing I did was take naked pictures for ESPN,” she said. “It was like two weeks before (my first title defense) and I was pumping out a lot of social media to try and get people to pay attention. He went to work and I stayed behind and was using his computer.”
“I was downloading something and then I just saw a bunch of ass! ‘What is that?’ It looked like it was amateurly taken. I had to look so I looked at it and it was all me.”
“You know when you’re just comfortable naked around somebody? Like you’re just naked on the bed playing DragonVale on your phone? I brush my teeth naked. That was all, every single thing, all naked. I just thought he was on his phone texting people … if you read the book you can see how I reacted to said photos.”
“There could be stuff on his phone. I don’t know. It could come up any day, to be honest. That’s one of the reasons I went and wrote this book. The truth is the best armor. Data and information is what power is right now. If I put everything out there then I really don’t ever have to worry about anyone holding anything against me. I’d rather people find these things out from me then later.”
In her My Fight / Your Fight autobiography, Rousey reveals how she reacted - Snappers McCreepy got an attitude adjustment.
Unlike most women victimized in this fashion, Rousey now has ferocious legal resources at her disposal. Should McCreepy’s images make their way onto the Net, he will face far, far worse problems than what happened so far already.