The exact reasons why ex-fighter turned coach Duane Ludwig left Urijah Faber’s ‘Team Alpha Male’ camp have never been made public, though it was clear that there was some kind of animosity between the two men.
However, after trying to take the high road and stay silent on the matter, Faber finally snapped and gave his version of events in a lengthy interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour show yesterday.
Faber claimed that when he first became involved with Ludwig he was warned by someone who knew him that the ex-UFC fighter, “gets really weird about money,” and while he shrugged it off at the time ‘The California Kid’ admits that in hindsight, “Oh my gosh, is that foreshadowing. Unbelievable.”
The Team Alpha Male owner went on to claim that within two days of agreeing a contract with Ludwig he was already asking him for more money, and that established a pattern where he alleges that Ludwig appeared to be driven almost solely by money.
The main breakdown between the two parties seems to have come from the fact that Faber had agreed to pay Ludwig a percentage of any discretionary bonuses he received from his fights by the UFC. Faber says that there were two fights where he didn’t receive a bonus, yet he alleges that Ludwig became paranoid and refused to believe that was the case even although Faber said he could verify it with the UFC brass.
Faber also had a laundry list of other alleged issues with Ludwig and a few of the key ones are listed below.
– Faber alleges that Ludwig refused to train female fighters at the gym and was also allegedly showing racism towards black fighters, jokingly telling them to stay 25 feet away from females in the gym and to get to the back of the line during training.
– He claims that on top of Ludwig’s coaching salary ‘Bang’ was also charging the teams fighters for private tutorials, to the extend that the many who many see as his protege, bantamweight title holder TJ Dillashaw confessed to Faber that he thought Ludwig was “bleeding me dry.”
– He says Ludwig also put pressure on other fighters until they agreed to give them a portion of their discretionary bonuses (in the beginning only Faber had agreed to do so as he was the team leader).
– Faber alleges Ludwig showed indimidating behaviour towards two of ‘The California Kid’s’ managers, the wife of his best friend and a UFC executive.
– Faber also claims that Ludwig eventually started appearing less and less at the gym as he was always away doing seminars, was only coaching fighters in gym who were earning him more money and later was only showing up on the day of the fight or sometimes the week of the fight to corner team members, yet was doing as many media interviews as possible during that period.
– In the end Faber discovered that Ludwig was plotting to leave Team Alpha Male to start up his own gym. He admitted this had been in the works for six months yet he’d never mentioned it to Faber.
So far Ludwig hasn’t responded to Faber’s allegations.
Check out the full, explosive interview with Faber via the video below courtesy of MMAfighting.com.
