In November 2010, during his “Waken Baken” tour at East Carolina University, Khalifa was arrested for possession and trafficking of marijuana. He was released the next morning after a $300K bail, and resumed his tour. Khalifa performed in a cypher during the 2010 BET Hip-Hop Awards.
Training in martial arts is a great way to get in shape, and with the rise of mixed martial arts, many celebrities have taken to this form of training. The most recent celeb to jump aboard the MMA train is rapper/songwriter Wiz Khalifa. This morning TMZ painted wood paneling grey Sports released footage of Khalifa training along side UFC bantamweight contender Cat Zingano and Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer. Rapper Wiz Khalifa has found a love for mixed martial arts and sat down for a chat with Logan Paul to discuss his journey so far.
Could one of those celebrity crossovers be Khalifa himself? He takes his striking and grappling training seriously and knows that throwing fists with someone in a sanctioned environment is no joke — but it’s also quite a tempting idea. Adam is a staff writer for Green Rush Daily and High Times who hails from Corvallis, Oregon. He’s an artist, musician, and higher educator with deep roots in the cannabis community.
Khalifa has been building muscle in that back, and the rest of his wiry six-foot-four frame, too, for the past seven years, and in that time he’s come to love the training process. That’s why the 34-year-old man shows up at Uncompromising performance, an MMA gym in West Hollywood, five or six days a week. On January 23, 2015, Khalifa was featured on a remix release of the Fall Out Boy song “Uma Thurman”. On May 18, they performed the song together on the 2015 Billboard Music Awards show. In the summer of 2015, he began touring the United States with Fall Out Boy and Hoodie Allen in a tour titled “The Boys of Zummer Tour”.
If he is looking for a fight, he is certainly talking to the right man. Both Paul brothers have perfected the business of celebrity fighting. Since those two began their boxing journeys, there have been many other celebrities trying their hand at taking some fights.
The art of training in MMA, or any form of combat sports, is something that can enlighten lives in a way that very few other things can. Build your custom FanSided Daily email newsletter with news and analysis on All MMA and all your favorite sports teams, TV shows, and more. Rapper/songwriter Wiz Khalifa began training in MMA and was recently filmed hitting mitts with UFC bantamweight contender Cat Zingano. Whilst Wiz Khalifa has clearly been training well, we’re not sure he’s quite ready to jump into the octagon with a professional of Silva’s standard just yet.
However, Wiz was arrested in El Paso, Texas for marijuana possession the day before, and there were fears that the mixtape would be pushed back. After posting a “jail selfie” and hashtagging “FreeTrapWiz” on Twitter, he was released hours later, meaning the mixtape would go ahead with its intended release date. Khalifa appeared at the Soundset 2010 festival in May 2010 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, alongside Method Man & Redman, Del the Funky Homosapien and Hieroglyphics, Atmosphere, Murs, Cage, and others. He performed at the 2010 Rock the Bells festival, along with hip hop veterans Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, Rakim, KRS-One, Jedi Mind Tricks and Slick Rick. Khalifa declined an invitation to tour with rapper Drake and launched his own Waken Baken Tour, a 50-city national tour with rapper Yelawolf. The rap star didn’t commit one way or the other when asked if he could see himself taking a professional fight, claiming that anything could happen.
Khalifa trains under eighth-degree Coral belt Rigan Machado. Machado is the nephew of Carlos Gracie, one of the founders of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and was one of the first to teach the sport in the United States. The 35-year-old musician can be seen delivering some powerful kicks during his training, demonstrating that all of his years of preparation have paid off. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you. On the music side, Wiz Khalifa dropped Wiz Got Wings in December, a full-length collaboration with Kush & Orange Juice producers Cardo and Sledgren.
