Chauvinism, continuously making racial jokes and bullying are just some of the things Urijah Faber says Duane Ludwig engaged in at Team Alpha Male.
There’s no love lost between Team Alpha Male and Duane “Bang” Ludwig.
The former UFC fighter-turned-coach who’s credited with moulding TJ Dillashaw into the bantamweight champion split with the gym nearly two years ago in unceremonious fashion.
In a stunning, almost 90-minute interview on the MMA Hour, Team Alpha Male leader Urijah Faber shed some light on why the relationship between his gym and Ludwig had become so strained. Firstly, the Californian Kid had an issue with Ludwig’s attitude towards female fighters.
“First off, Duane refused to work with any females. He said, ‘I just want to tell you, I’m not supportive of women’s MMA. I won’t be working with anybody, I won’t be working with Paige (VanZant), I’m not going to be working with Nicky, I’m not going to work with Veronica. I don’t believe in it.’ Okay. That was an issue.”
Faber then accused Ludwig of repeatedly making inappropriate jokes at the expense of a couple of African-American fighters, which he received complaints about.
“The second thing was, he was saying racial things. And that’s what I’m saying when I say, things aren’t jokes just because you laughed at them, especially if they’re hurtful.”
“So I had two of the African-American guys on our team who approached me and said, ‘this is getting real uncomfortable. It’s funny one time, I guess, when he says stuff like, all the black guys at the end of the line. But he’s saying it every single day.'”
“Then one guy says, ‘every single time I’m in the gym and I’m talking to a girl, Duane yells across the gym, hey, so-and-so, all black guys 25 feet away from the females.’ He says, ‘I get it, he thinks it’s funny, whatever. But he keeps doing it and it’s really getting on my nerves.'”
Ludwig wasn’t always cracking-wise in the gym, according to Faber. The TUF coach labelled the coach a “loose-cannon” and claimed that he had to talk to Ludwig about “breaking down” fighters.
“One girl from Alaska said that Duane keeps saying, ‘you’re pretty terrible and you should just quit.’ She goes, ‘he starts laughing like he’s joking but I know he’s serious.’ She wasn’t the best girl on the team, and it was mean is what it was. So I had to talk to him about that.”
“On top of that, I had my managers who Duane basically struck a little fear into. One time, my one manager was talking and Duane told him to ‘shut the fuck up when he’s talking.’ It got real awkward and silent, and my manager says, ‘no one talks to me like that.’ So Duane says something like, ‘when I’m speaking, don’t speak.’ That kind of thing. I had to talk to him about that.”
It seems like Faber had a lot of talks with Ludwig. It will be interesting to see how Bang responds to these accusations.
