After edging Mike Pierce in a hard-fought split decision, Josh Koscheck announced that he has parted ways with long-time team American Kickboxing Academy. This follows closely on the news that AKA grappling coach Dave Camarillo had also left the camp.
MMA Weekly got the scoop on the motivations behind Koscheck’s departure and as you’d expect Koscheck pulls no punches:
“There’s one reason I’m leaving San Jose AKA and that’s because of Javier Mendez,” Koscheck stated. “He’s the only reason I’m leaving that gym. It almost hurts me because I love training with those guys, I love training with (Jon) Fitch, and (Mike) Swick and Cain (Velasquez) and (Daniel) Cormier, and (Justin) Wilcox and all those guys, they are my brothers, and it hurts me to have to make this decision for me because the fact that it’s like splitting up the family.
“This goes back from quite a bit, and history repeats itself. Whenever you have a guy for example whenever I had the loss against (Thiago) Alves and I took the fight on short notice with him, and after the fight I had a lot of friends come up to me and calling me saying ‘have you read this interview with Javier Mendez?’ and talking about me and my game plan,” Koscheck said.
“So I went online and I read this interview and I started to notice after all my teammates lost, it was the same thing. They didn’t listen to the game plan, that he deferred it away from himself, and he threw us under the bus basically saying that we didn’t listen to him and he tries to make himself look good, so it doesn’t reflect on him us losing.”
Koscheck will continue to be managed by “Crazy” Bob Cook’s Zinkin Entertainment and will train out of his own gym in Fresno. Cook remains an active partner at AKA. AKA remains the training home of former UFC heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez and top welterweight Jon Fitch. Koscheck plans to continue training with Dave Camarillo and former AKA teammates like Jon Fitch.
In an interview with MMA Nation, Camarillo denied any personal differences were involved in his departure from AKA, stating that he simply wished to spend more time running his two gyms and teaching classes rather than training fighters.
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