It looks like there could be some truth in Urijah Faber’s anecdotes about Duane “Bang Ludwig’s time at Team Alpha Male.
Faber gave a lengthy interview on the MMA Hour in which he let loose about his strained relationship with the former Team Alpha Male striking coach.
One of Faber’s more serious claims was that Ludwig bullied some of the fighters, brought a female athlete to tears and regularly made offensive jokes involving race. Ludwig denied that he ever made anyone at the gym uncomfortable over the issue of race to MMA Fighting.
“I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. There’s jokes floating around the gym all the time. For him to point me out, like what the hell dude?”
However, Ludwig didn’t completely refute the allegation that he refused to train female fighters at the gym.
“I wouldn’t say I’m against women’s MMA. I do feel uneasy seeing a woman get punched in the face. That, I don’t like.”
“Women’s grappling and wrestling, that’s cool. But seeing a woman punched in the face, I don’t really necessarily like that. There’s awesome women’s fights, but it still makes me feel a bit weird. But yeah, I don’t like to train women.”
The feud between Faber and Ludwig has been reaching a boiling point of late, and Ludwig reckons this is being intentionally done by the Team Alpha Male leader. Ludwig thinks Faber latest tirade is out of fear that his fighters could leave to join him in Colorado.
Ludwig added that he still has a good relationship with everyone at Team Alpha Male, everyone that is except for Faber. He hinted that the beef all stems from money.
“We definitely had a couple lapses. Every time we talked I thought one thing was said and then apparently something else was said. So there’s multiple times when we had what I thought were agreements and the result was always me getting short-handed. I don’t get it.”
“That’s why we always had problems, because we always had a conversation, we’d agree on certain things and when it came time for certain things to happen, they wouldn’t.”
