UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy not working with FBI on recent ISIS threat

Tim Kennedy

So what happens when you’re apparently targeted by ISIS and notified by the FBI?

Do you accept an armed escort and a security detail? Do you limit public appearances? Do you move your family to a presumably safer location?

If you’re Tim Kennedy – a UFC middleweight, Special Forces sniper and Green Beret – you do pretty much the same thing you’ve been doing since you entered the public eye. Which is to say, you stay ready and carry the proper tools.

“I’ve been a professional fighter for 13 years; I’ve been in Special Forces for 12 years,” he told MMAjunkie. “From the first time I was on national television for the (International Fight League), people started looking for me. This is nothing new.”

Kennedy was recently notified by the FBI of “credible threats” against him by the terrorist group. He said he was offered “different tiers” of assistance to ensure his safety. He won’t say what they were, but his answer was the same to all.

No thanks.

“If it provided an element that surpassed what I already have in place, then i absolutely would have considered it,” he said. “But everything they offered, I already have or am doing something that’s superior to it.”

Kennedy thinks of his home in Austin, Texas, as a “hard target,” and that’s why he’s not particularly worried about a group of thugs coming to get him.

“Between cameras or gigantic dogs or motion sensors or where it’s located or where my neighbors are, it pretty much creates a nightmare for a radicalized extremist terrorist,” he said.

In fact, he said, everyone is just making too big a deal about this whole ISIS thing. Anyone with a military background and a public profile is bound to be targeted by extremists. He’s nothing special – except maybe for the training he’s undertaken to fight them.

“My family is a very hard target if those little cowards thought about doing something, which they’re not,” Kennedy said. “They’re a bunch of (expletive), and they’re going to find an unarmed journalist or a 16-year-old girl in Germany.

“They’re not going to come after a Special Forces sniper, Ranger-qualified UFC fighter, or his family with his 150-pound German Shepherd that likes to eat people that smell weird. We’re not that family that they’re going to go after. I wish. But we’re not.”

Next week, Kennedy (18-5 MMA, 3-1 UFC) will meet with the UFC to go after what he wants – a fight with Vitor Belfort (25-11 MMA, 14-7 UFC). In early March, he’ll have completed an assignment at a military urban combat course that forced him to pass on an offered bout with ex-light heavyweight champ and onetime middleweight title challenger Lyoto Machida. He will be able to start a fight camp. As to who that is, he’ll find out.

“I’m going to be in Las Vegas next week, and I’m going to try to sexually proposition (UFC President) Dana White to give me Vitor.”

Kennedy has some competition in that regard. Middleweight champ Luke Rockhold wants a rematch with the Brazilian ex-champ, who knocked him out in 2013, or he may seek an immediate rematch with Chris Weidman, the man he defeated this past month for the title.

Not surprisingly, Kennedy thinks he’s got a better argument for getting the matchup. He points to Belfort’s record of 1-1 and said if the Brazilian wants a title shot, the two of them should fight for the opportunity.

“I am technically 3-1, even though I should be 4-0,” said Kennedy, who was was TKOd by Yoel Romero in a controversial bout at UFC 178. “I’m currently ranked No. 6 (in the UFC), so I am in the hunt, as Dana would put it, for the title. He beats a fellow contender, he is the contender. There’s plenty of motivation.

“(Vitor’s) probably going to say no, because he knows he’ll get beat. But whatever.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.