Over the last two weeks, 50 Cent has been dropping hints that he's about to get involved in MMA. It's unclear if that will be as a fighter or a promoter, but if you've been following his moves on social media lately, it's apparent something is in the works.
On May 3, 50 posted a photo of himself with Bellator president Scott Coker, which sparked an initial round of rumors that the rapper was about to get involved on the business side of MMA. At the time, Coker told MMAjunkie, "I explained to him a lot about our fighter-recruitment system and how we build athletes and sign free agents. He was interested. He had a lot of questions—a lot of good questions."
Then, on May 8, 50 posted a split image photo of himself and MMA legend Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, hinting that there would be an upcoming fight between the two of them. The image was quickly deleted, but not before Jackson replied with a post of his own: "Is 50 serious?!"
Later in the week, Coker told MMAjunkie that he thought 50 "could probably" fight MMA. He said he was unsure about the legitimacy of 50's claims that a fight with Jackson would happen, though. Speaking on the rumors, he explained, "Then I come home, and there he is. Boom, to his (18 million) Instagram followers. And then my phone is blowing up: ‘Hey, are you signing 50 Cent to a fight?’ A lot of speculation at what’s going on. But, listen, the guy, I haven’t even talked to him about fighting."
On Saturday night, 50 kept the rumors going by attending Bellator 199 with Coker.
Asked if there might be an announcement about a partnership between the two in the near future, Coker deflected and joked to MMAjunkie, "Yeah, he’s got a new album dropping in about six weeks." Then he gave some more context on their relationship: "I’ll go back to the first time we met. He wanted to talk about MMA. And there were some pictures taken, people speculate. I don’t know where he said he was going to fight a three-fight deal—I don’t even think he said it. I think somebody else started that rumor: ‘He’s going to fight, he’s going to fight a three-fight deal, then he’s going to fight 'Rampage.'"
Coker noted that 50 also plans to attend Bellator 200 in May and said, "He’s a friend of the family. We’ll see where it goes."
Downplaying their meetings, Coker explained, "Listen, there’s no business relationship between 50 and us. He came as a fan. When he wants to bring some muscle to a promotion like he helped us with this, he did a great job. We should all thank him. It’s good for MMA." He added, "It’s like, look, he loves MMA. And when a big star like that loves MMA and wants to be involved. It just makes a lot of sense. And he wanted to come. He wanted to check it out. This was his first time to a Bellator fight."
If 50 Cent's Twitter posts are to be believed, though, the two are in fact cooking something up together. We'll just have to wait and see exactly how it unfolds.
"If we can get this right, it would be big," 50 wrote on Sunday.
