Sage Northcutt responds to Muay Thai champion Ilya Grad’s criticism: ‘I’m not sure where he got his world title from’

Israeli Muay Thai champion Ilya Grad recently went to train with UFC star Sage Northcutt to help him prepare for his fight with Enrique Marin set for UFC 200 in July.

Grad left the training session with Northcutt quite disappointed and had a lot of criticism for Northcutt’s father and his coaching.

Grad said that Northcutt’s father was “probably the worst coach I’ve seen in my life.”

Video from their sparring session surfaced and Northcutt’s father addressed the incident as well saying that Grad’s recollection of the incident was completely untrue.

“Super” Sage spoke with Ariel Helwani on Monday’s episode of “The MMA Hour” and opened up on the incident from his perspective.

“That was my first time training with him, and he’s supposed to be a Muay Thai world champion. I’m not sure where he got his world title from,” Northcutt said (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “As you could see from the fight, I actually showed up there — my jiu-jitsu coach, my grappling coach set it all up. So I was supposed to go there and spar hard, and he starts making excuses saying his neck hurts, he’s this, he’s that and he can’t spar, so we said okay.

“So I’m out there just toying around, as you could see in the video, barely touching him, just moving around, playing, pretty having fun, as you could see. And the comments he said, the things he said out there, those weren’t true. None of those were true, and you could see that from the video.”

Northcutt added that Grad was there to be a sparring partner, and wasn’t brought in to teach him anything.

“For him to say that he was there to teach me, he wasn’t there to teach me anything,” Northcutt said. “From that video, you could see that he couldn’t teach me anything. Like, he was just there to be a sparring partner.

“That was definitely not right of him to do that,” Northcutt added. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. None of that, none of the facts or anything that he was trying to claim were true. So, I believe that he was just trying to get some limelight from us and get some attention and get his name out there.”

What do you think about the two sides to the story? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section!