Factory X coach Mark Montoya has spoken out a few days after his fighter Isaac Dulgarian was cut from the UFC amid allegations of throwing a fight following his 1st round submission loss to Yadier del Valle.

Montaya reveals that he’d actually approached Dulgarian personally ahead of the fight after hearing allegations that concerned him, but he says the fighter insisted there was nothing to worry about.

“From my perspective, that’s a massive distraction from what our job is,” Montoya said of the situation while being interviewed by Ariel Helwani. “Our job is that we prepared weeks upon weeks to go win a fight. So, first and foremost, as a coach and as a person, I care about my fighter. So there’s a conversation that needs to be had, and we had the conversation about allegations. He reassured me he wasn’t involved, and I had no reason not to believe him.

“So we reassessed, like we would anytime… We had some news, let’s verify whether this is true or not, he reassured me it wasn’t, and then my job, like I said, is to continue to train my guys to win in life, train my guys to go win in that cage, and my full focus was on, ‘Awesome, let’s go win a fight and prove ourselves right and let’s get after it.’ That ultimately was the discussion.”

Montaya confirmed in the interview that he is no longer training Dulgarian, who is now under investigation by the FBI.