Ex-Monster photog echoes Dominick Cruz with allegations of being “blackballed” by Hans Molenkamp

An ex-Monster Energy photographer echoed the comments made by UFC’s Dominick Cruz with allegations of being “blackballed” by Hans Molenkamp.

Cruz made news headlines when he recently called out Molenkamp for a charity MMA fight following his split decision win over Casey Kenney at UFC 259. That has led to plenty of chatter about the Monster executive, with other UFC fighters such as Angela Hill coming to the defense of Cruz. Now, we have another person speaking up about Molenkamp.

In a video posted to his YouTube, photographer Courtney Hendo — who originally met Molenkamp through Cruz at Alliance MMA in San Diego, California — backed Cruz’ allegations about Molenkamp, suggesting that the Monster Energy executive makes fighters do things that he wants them to do, and if they say no, he says they hold them hostage.

“If you look at his social media, it seems he’s the cool guy, the fun guy. He’s around all these elite fighters (like Cruz), you know. He’s the cool guy, but behind the scenes, these guys are forced to interact with him. They’re forced to do all the antics, get the Monster can kicked out of their hand, and do all this stupid stuff and these crazy, funny videos. They’re forced to do that. If they don’t do that, what happens is that they will lose their contract. They’re pretty much held hostage. And that was the same thing with me,” Hendo said of the fighters such as Cruz who worked with Molenkamp (via MMAjunkie.com).

According to Hendo, Molenkamp was extremely controlling of him and after telling him to drop everything he was doing to go see him in L.A., Hendo quit his job with Monster. After that, Hendo alleges, Molenkamp sent out a message telling other fighters such as Cruz that if they worked with Hendo they would be blackballed by Monster Energy.

“‘If you do business with Courtney, you lose your contract.’ So ultimately, I couldn’t work in MMA, I was blackballed. And since I was blackballed, I damn near went homeless, and that’s the truth. I couldn’t make money in the sport – the field I built my career on. But I was blessed enough to save some money on the side to open up my studio, and it took me two years to get this thing going, and I had to sleep on the floor until I got this thing up,” Hendo said, backing up the comments by Cruz about the way Molenkamp works.

What do you make of the feud between Dominick Cruz and Monster Energy’s Hans Molenkamp?