Written by Des Bieler at Washington Post.com
Former MMA fighter War Machine was convicted Monday of 29 counts, including sexual assault and kidnapping, in a case stemming from an August 2014 attack that left his ex-girlfriend and another man bloody and battered. A Las Vegas jury deadlocked on two counts of attempted murder, but Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver, who legally changed his name to War Machine during a career in which he went 14-5 while competing for promotion companies UFC and Bellator, could still face life imprisonment.
Koppenhaver, 35, went by his birth name during the trial, which featured testimony from his ex-girlfriend, former porn actress Christy Mack, and Corey Thomas, the man prosecutors said she was with when the former MMA star burst in on them.
Mack, 24, had told the jury that Koppenhaver’s violence against her increased over the course of their 15-month relationship, culminating in the attack, which left her with a fractured eye socket, a broken nose, missing teeth, leg injuries and a lacerated liver. She testified that an earlier incident, when she said he slammed her face into the dashboard of a vehicle she was trying to leave during an argument, resulted in a black eye, a cut nose, a bite mark on her chin and a chipped tooth.
Mack, whose real name is Christine Mackinday, said that after the earlier incident, Koppenhaver told her, “Now I have to kill you because people saw you trying to escape. Now I have to take you out to the desert and kill you.”
Last week, Koppenhaver’s attorney, Jay Leiderman, conceded guilt on lesser charges in hopes that the jury would not convict his client on the more serious counts. He also acknowledged that Koppenhaver threatened Thomas with violence if the latter went to the police. Thomas, who said that he’d been dating Mack for about two months when the attack occurred, testified that he suffered a broken nose, a dislocated shoulder, scrapes, bruises and bite marks while fighting with Koppenhaver.
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