Earlier today, Bloody Elbow passed along some pretty harsh comments from UFC welterweight Josh Koscheck in regards to his former team, American Kickboxing Academy. He actually said that he hoped the gym burned to the ground, and even implied that he wouldn’t mind if one person was inside at the time – namely, former coach Javier Mendez. MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani was able to speak to Mendez tonight at the UFC on Fox 4 open workouts to get his reaction to Koscheck’s statements, and he said he wasn’t very surprised at all by them:
“When you’ve spent eight years with an individual like Josh, I think that nothing is gonna surprise you with him. Actually he really hates me, so it didn’t shock me. That’s him, that’s who he is. I just wish that if it does burn down that I’m not in it!”
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“I’m not gonna let it affect me. Hey, we’re not friends. He doesn’t want to be my friend, he made it obvious, so I’m just moving on. I’ve got a team to focus on.”
The whole Koscheck/Mendez/AKA thing will apparently play out on a reality show called Fight Factory, which debuts on Nuvo TV on August 15th.
The rest of the interview is very interesting as well, with Mendez talking about what actually led to the heat between the two (he says it’s his fault, surprisingly), whether B.J. Penn will indeed be training at AKA or not, when Cain will fight Junior dos Santos, and a whole lot more. You can check out the video below, or see all the choice quotes below the jump.
On what caused the animosity between him and Koscheck:
Well, I did something. You’re not going to hear it here, you’ll have to watch it on the show.
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I’m at fault, only because, the person that’s in charge, he knows if you do certain things, you know your children type of thing, and you know what they’ll do. So, I did something that I knew that could can cause a bad reaction, and if I had to do it all over again I probably wouldn’t. But I’ve gotta accept the fact, my responsibility for it.
Does he regret it?
Yeah, I do. Because you know what, I don’t like hate. And I created legit hate. I do regret it. But you’ll have to watch the show to see what it is.
After talking about the reality show for a bit, the topic switched to B.J. Penn wanting to train at AKA, but Jon Fitch wasn’t a fan of the idea. Will Mendez let Penn come to San Jose anyway?
When you have fighters that could potentially be fighting each other, the gym rule is that we shouldn’t have anybody come in that could potentially could be a match. And Jon still wants that match. And as long as there’s a possibility of that match happening, we as a team, need to do what we have to do.
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I love BJ. I love him like a son. Always will, he’s just an unbelievable guy but we’re in a competition thing here and as much as we’d like to think it’s cool, it’s a competition.
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