The War Machine Trial began this week, he’s being charged with over 30 felonies for the alleged beating of former girlfriend Christy Mack and another man. It’s been two years since that event first made MMA headlines in the worst way, and for the past two days Christy Mack has been on the witness stand. Even after having seen the photos of the aftermath listening to her account of the whole thing is shocking.

Hearing her testimony alongside the mountain of evidence the prosecution presented on Thursday makes it very confusing as to why Jon Koppenhaver (War Machine) refused to accept a plea agreement. I don’t watch many court proceedings nor am I much of a legal scholar but War Machine is getting buried out there. If the details weren’t so grisly it would be comical what a layup this whole thing is for the prosecution. From him publicly joking about rape:

Just raped @ChristyMack She tried to make me wait until “after errands” As if! =p — War Machine (@warmachine170) August 10, 2013

To the countless text exchanges the prosecution read which ended with, “will kill”. In the attorney game, getting appointed a defendant named War Machine in an attempted murder trial is about as bad as it gets. I legitimately felt sorry for his defense attorney. That was until the defence started their cross-examination.

Now evidently War Machines attorney, who began cross examining Mack, is a late addition to the defense team and he is doing a comically horrible job. At 6:15:00 after failing to find a file he proceeds to asks Mack about a pet that doesn’t exist and then gives up on that line of questioning entirely saying, “We’ll come back to this when I have my ducks in a row. Are we going to break soon?” I mean the guy is in a tough position but good lord get it together. He’s a bumbling mess out there constantly apologizing for messing up procedure, misattributing quotes, and just generally pursuing terrible lines of questioning. First he tried to make a point about Christy Mack covering her tattoos which went nowhere. He then tried to establish a timeline of how her twitter followers grew after the attack, yeah he went there. All this before he tried accusing her of getting recent plastic surgery only to be told she had to have her nose rebroken to be repaired from the attack and received a lip injection on one side of her mouth to balance out the scar tissue she was left with. The dude is grasping at straws with buttery fingers, it’s truly a spectacle. It’s as if they have no focused defense whatsoever, he is truly the Edmond Tarverdyan of defense lawyers.

Other unsurprising details came out in regards to his Steroid use and how he’d subsequently come off them before a fight. Clearly Bellator’s drug tests aren’t especially hard to beat, but that’s nothing we didn’t already know. Watching this case the past few days has been a bummer to say the least. Here’s a guy who doesn’t appear to be fundamentally evil but has absolutely no control over his temper and has the skill and capacity to commit heinous attacks on people. Maybe someday we’ll have a way to truly rehabilitate people in a way which can be quantitatively tested and verified but until then I don’t know that you can have a time bomb like this walking around in public. If this were an isolated incident, crime of passion type situation I could see him getting a shorter sentence. But after hearing the prosecution pour over the type of minute things that would set him off I don’t think that’s the case here. To that point I’m reminded of a video he recorded years ago ranting about a gas station altercation:

It’s alarming to know people that unreasonable and irritable exist. And although this whole situation has been a black mark on MMA, it’s also a damn good reminder to take jiu jitsu or some kind of martial art. Mental health is a motherfucker in this country and there are some unstable people out there. So learn some self defence or buy military food rations and never leave the house. I’ll keep you abreast of the details as the case progresses but if you want to watch Thursdays proceedings in full you can find the video here.