By Luke Thomas @SBNLukeThomas on Jun 13, 2016
Muay Thai champion and coach Ilya Grad had a sparring session with UFC lightweight Sage Northcutt this week and while Grad has high praise for the rising talent, he argued in a subsequent Instagram post Northcutt's father is overprotective and damaging to his career. Video of the sparring session soon emerged and Northcutt's father has responded, challenging Grad's account of what happened. Still, the controversy remains.
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Speaking on SiriusXM's The Luke Thomas Show, Grad opened up about what happened, why he took to social media, the reputation he alleges Northcutt's father has in their local fighting community and why unless Northcutt goes to a 'serious gym', he won't ever reach his full potential.
The full transcription of the conversation has been lightly edited for readability.
Let's establish your background. You're a Muay Thai champion. You've fought in Thailand and Southeast Asia for how long?
10 years. I have 54 professional fights, another 50 amateur, so a total experience of over 100 fights now.
My understanding is you were brought in to spar rising sensation Sage Northcutt. Who contacted you to make that happen?
Correction. I wasn't brought in. They actually contacted me the day before. They asked me to work with him. They said they don't have sparring partners, so they asked if they could bring him in.
I'm in Houston. I'm training at Gracie Barra. I said, of course, they can bring him any day. I have other fighters I'm working with. I'm always happy to cooperate with other people.
The video is out. People can watch for themselves. For folks who may not know, what's a sparring session of this variety supposed to look like?
From the start, I always [told] I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that. I know he has a big fight coming up. For me, I was going very light. I just wanted to him to get some good work going on. For me, old school Muay Thai, you don't spar hard. You start very light, you start very easy. You work defensively and you work through your defense.
It wasn't hard sparring at all. We were just moving around, having fun and I was making sure we'd have no incidents because I read before that other gyms had incidents, similar incidents, during sparring sessions. So, I was making sure that wasn't going to happen.
But from what the video shows, you guys stop a lot because his father is yelling instructions to him. Is that right?
No, we didn't stop all the time. His dad was yelling. [Sage] stopped even to tell his dad, he cannot be his coach. We were not sparring. We were having a good time, actually, me and Sage. We were working very nice, very controlled. I was talking in between, telling him what was doing well, what he should feint here, work here.
We had a great sparring session, to be honest. I had a good time with him.
Full read at http://www.mmafighting.com/2016/6/13/11913136/ilya-grad-believes-sage-northcutt-has-to-leave-for-a-serious-gym
- If was Edmouth, he would have told that his pupil knocked out the muay-thai guy.
Just for reference
