mgk Says He “Got Punched in the Face and I Punched Back” Amid Feud With Corey Taylor

“I got punched in the face and I punched back, and that’s crazy?” That blunt line kicked off Machine Gun Kelly’s latest conversation about his long-running spat with Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor.

The comment came on the Tuesday (May 5) episode of Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza’s podcast, where mgk framed the clash in the language of a simple personal code. When Garza asked, “What do you do if someone punches you in the face?” mgk answered with what he has said before: you hit back.

mgk at the Pre-Grammy Gala on January 31, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. Earl Gibson III/Deadline

He went on to explain the collateral damage the beef caused. Before the public fallout, mgk and Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson were close; that friendship, he said, fractured because of the fight but has since been repaired. “Now me and Sid are back cool. And Corey and I haven’t had a chance to speak,” mgk told Garza. “We were both tripping.”

There was little hedging when he revisited the opening move. He doubled down on the idea of returning a blow, saying he has “no remorse” for how things began, and insisted his reaction mirrored what he thinks Taylor would have done in his shoes. “It’s the same thing Corey would’ve done,” mgk said.

The roots of the animosity, as mgk laid them out, go back to the period around his pop-punk pivot. He reminded listeners that he’d invited Taylor to guest on his 2020 record Tickets to My Downfall — specifically the deluxe track “Can’t Look Back.” “I said, ‘I think it would be really cool to see you do this type of verse on this song,’ as a fan,” mgk recalled. Taylor pushed back on the idea and ultimately bowed out. Meanwhile, a collaboration with Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst — the mgk/Durst track “Fix Ur Face” — has just topped Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, a small data point in a larger rivalry.

When the album succeeded, mgk said he saw Taylor, “somebody that [he] looked up to,” then watching Taylor verbally dismiss him. The feud officially flared in 2021 after Taylor made a broad jab about artists switching into rock, suggesting some do so after they’ve “failed” in previous genres and tacked on, “I think he knows who he is.” That line was followed by mgk’s on-stage response at Riot Fest, where he accused Taylor of hiding behind his mask and tongue-lashing audiences from a distance: “You wanna know what I’m really happy that I’m not doing? Being 50 years old wearing a f—ing weird mask on a f—ing stage, talking sh–,” he said at the time.

On Garza’s show, mgk framed his Riot Fest outburst as an instinctive reaction to being demeaned. “Like I said, it’s a punch in the face, what’re you gonna do? You punch back,” he said, adding that the backlash fell on him afterward as everyone turned. He reiterated that he still admires Slipknot’s work even if he “did not appreciate what happened.”

The conversation didn’t close the loop between the two men. For now, mgk says the friendship with Sid is mended, but the line with Taylor remains. He ended the chat acknowledging his ongoing fandom even as he stood firm about how he responded.

Watch the full Garza Podcast episode below.