Vulgar display of coaching?
If Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) lightweight phenom Sage Northcutt is ever going to compete for the promotion's 155-pound title, he needs to ditch those low-level sparring partners he's pushing around back home in Houston, Texas, and join a serious gym.
That's according to Muay Thai champ and sparring coach Ilya Grad.
Grad made headlines last week for lambasting Northcutt's Dad-ager (more on that here). According to his firsthand account, father doesn't know best and kept interrupting their sessions to hand down some not-so "Super" advice, which led to a public falling out.
From SiriusXM's The Luke Thomas Show (via MMA Fighting):
"When you have a dad coming to training, he should stay off the mat. He shouldn't be interfering with what's happening. (Sage) has to leave, he has to go to a serious gym. Look, he's training here in Houston. He has no sparring partners. That's why they contacted me. I know people from other gyms, nobody wants to work with them. It's sad because you need good sparring every day. You cannot do some jiu-jitsu and hit the pads and be ready. You have to be ready for all situations from somebody, hits you hard, then in a fight when you're really tired. I was feeling they were very overprotective with him. He's doesn't have people to work with. He has some people of a very low level that he gets to punch around and then everybody's happy because they think they're doing well during the training. You need somebody to push him, so he won't do so well, so he will learn to adjust."
I'm pretty sure they tried that already.
In any event, Enrique Marin will be waiting to slug Northcutt at the upcoming UFC 200 pay-per-view (PPV) fight card, which takes place next month (Sat., July 9, 2016) inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, and nobody can protect him once the cage door slams shut.
For more on that upcoming fight click here.
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