Talk about a rough week.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight-turned-championship striking coach Duane Ludwig found himself on the hot seat earlier this month after he claimed the only Team Alpha Male fighter hungry enough to win gold was reigning 135-pound kingpin TJ Dillashaw.
Who just so happens to be Ludwig's star pupil.
As expected, that critique infuriated the rest of the gang in Sacramento, Calif., who took their case to social media (see it here). Ludwig, who left Team Alpha Male to open his own training facility in Colorado, backtracked on his comments and admitted to saying "stupid stuff sometimes."
From The MMA Hour:
"They train their butts off and for me to say they don't want to be champ, that's not fair. That's not actually true. TJ just puts in a little extra effort, a bit more focus and a bit more desire. That's what I see and that's what I was truly meaning, not to discredit anybody. If anything, I just wanted to make sure I was highlighting TJ's push for the belt. That was the main thing. It wasn't to put anybody down. I shouldn't have actually brought up the team, but that was the people that I trained. So that's what my reference guide was for."
Team Alpha Male stars Urijah Faber, Chad Mendes, and Joseph Benavidez have all come up short in their attempts to capture a UFC championship.
But they weren't the only combatants to be dismissed by Ludwig. "Bang" also told the mixed martial arts (MMA) media that former bantamweight kingpin Dominick Cruz, forced to relinquish his title after multiple injuries, will get KTFO if and when he comes back to challenge Dillashaw.
"The Dominator" retorts during his chat with Ariel Helwani:
"Duane Ludwig is the same guy who told (Joseph) Benavidez, ‘just keep going forward on Demetrious Johnson. He doesn't sit down on his punches, he can't knock you out.' What happened to Benavidez? He got knocked out, and that's because Duane Ludwig told him ‘don't worry about Demetrious Johnson knocking you out, just go forward, he doesn't hit hard.' Duane Ludwig could learn something from me. I could be Duane Ludwig's coach. Straight up. And so could (Alliance MMA head trainer) Eric del Fierro. Duane Ludwig is talking a bunch of nonsense about knocking me out. He doesn't know anything. Have you heard him in an interview? He's stuttering the whole time. The guy has been hit in his head too much already."
Ouch.
I think the only guy getting shit on worse than Ludwig is that dopey dentist who shot some sacred lion in Zimbabwe.
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