Strikeforce Champ Jake Shields: Jose Canseco is a Scumbag.

In an interview with MMA Weekly Radio, Fighters.com second-ranked middleweight and Strikeforce champion Jake Shields (24-4-1) called former baseball all-star turned fighter Jose Canseco (0-1) “kind of a scumbag”.

“I certainly wouldn’t let him come into my gym,” Shields claimed.  It’s an awkward situation for Shields because Canseco is training with Shields’s trainer, Cesar Gracie.

“I guess that’s Cesar’s decision,” said Shields.  He added, “I don’t really want to help the guy. I haven’t met the guy yet, but seeing his track record, I don’t really want to have anything to do with him. He’s not someone I want in my life. I don’t want to help a guy out who has constantly screwed everyone over who has been close to him.”

Since retiring from professional baseball, Canseco is perhaps most infamous for outting current and former baseball stars for using steroids and admitting his own use of performance enhancing drugs in his books “Juiced” and “Vindicated”.

Canseco’s MMA career has thus far only featured a hilarious beatdown by “Techno Goliath” Hong Man Choi (2-3) after which Canseco claimed he was led to believe before the fight that the fighting wasn’t going to be real.  However, Strikeforce is reportedly considering matching Canseco versus former former NFL Pro Bowl running back Herschel Walker (0-0).

Shields weighed-in, saying, “I like Hershel Walker and I’d like to see Hershel kick his ass, but if he was fighting under my team that would make me feel a little weird, so I don’t know how I feel about that.”

With Canseco’s reputation as a steroids whistle-blower and MMA’s past struggles with fighters testing clean, Canseco might find more cold shoulders than just Shields’s.  (Clearly, that’s in no way an insinuation that Shields is steering clear of Canseco because of performance enhancing drugs.)  However, though Fighters.com agrees with Shields that Canseco is a scumbag, he’s a useful scumbag.  Canseco’s claims about steroid abuse in baseball have helped clean up that sport and, if his presence in MMA accomplishes anything similar, Fighters.com is all for it.

Shields will defends his title from third-ranked “Hollywood” Dan Henderson (25-7) at Strikefore in Nashville April 17.