After defeating Mike Pierca at UFC 143 Saturday night , Josh Koscheck announced at thre post fight press con that he was leaving longtime team American Kickboxing Academy. Now he details the reasons, in an exclusive interview on Sunday with MMAWeekly.
I will never step foot in AKA in San Jose again.
My teammates over there at AKA in San Jose are my brothers. I love those guys. Eight years, we’ve basically trained ourselves and got us to the level that we are and we’ve all relied on each other and those guys are forever going to be my teammates, I’m forever going to train with them, but I’m just not going to train in San Jose with them.”
I’ll invite them and I’ll pay them to come to train in Fresno with me when I have fight camps and that type of thing. Those guys are my family. Bob Cook, Dave Camarillo, I’m still going to be managed by Zinkin Entertainment, Bob Cook will still be in my corner and coaching me, he’ll come here a couple days a week and train with me, Dave Camarillo will come here a couple days, and I think I’m going to be better off.
There’s one reason I’m leaving San Jose AKA and that’s because of Javier Mendez. He’s the only reason I’m leaving that gym. It almost hurts me because I love training with those guys, I love training with Fitch, and Swick and Cain and Cormier, and Wilcox and all those guys, they are my brothers, and it hurts me to have to make this decision for me because the fact that it’s like splitting up the family.
This goes back from quite a bit, and history repeats itself. Whenever you have a guy for example whenever I had the loss against Alves and I took the fight on short notice with him, and after the fight I had a lot of friends come up to me and calling me saying ‘have you read this interview with Javier Mendez?’ and talking about me and my game plan.”
So I went online and I read this interview and I started to notice after all my teammates lost, it was the same thing. They didn’t listen to the game plan, that he deferred it away from himself, and he threw us under the bus basically saying that we didn’t listen to him and he tries to make himself look good, so it doesn’t reflect on him – us losing.
It’s because DeWayne Zinkin and Bob Cook recruited us to go there. That’s the only reason that everybody’s there, it’s not because of Javier Mendez, it’s not because of the gym AKA, it’s because of DeWayne Zinkin and Bob Cook, they built this thing. They brought the best guys in the world together,
Bob Cook and Dave Camarillo they’re always responsible and they take their share of wins and losses and that’s what you’ve got to love about those guys. Bob Cook and Dave Camarillo, they’re loyal. You lose, guess what it was all of our faults, they take the brunt of that. Javier is more concerned about the camp, and looking good, and who’s going to be the next guy to bring him money. I just can’t be around that anymore.
It was a horrible training camp because of that. I basically trained myself the whole last training camp. Actually more than that, it’s been the last 3 or 4 training camps, I trained myself. So it’s like why be away from Fresno where I have two gyms I built, I have an amazing house, I have amazing family here and friends, and people that support me here. I can’t do that. Had I stayed there my career would only be one or two more fights.”
I think people’s egos got in the way. Well, not people just Javier, his ego got in the way, and too many cameras in the gym and him trying to build himself up and his brand, his AKA brand, which is fine I understand that, but it should never take precedence over training guys. As a head coach of a gym and he says he’s the man, he’s the boss over there, he should have the responsibility to make the fighters as best as we possibly could be, but he never did that.
I think it affected me a lot. I knew I was going to make this announcement after the fight, I obviously wanted to win and have that opportunity to make that announcement at the press conference. I was going to do it in the Octagon. There’s a lot of emotion in this because this has been my life for eight years. Since I’ve been in the UFC and started my career training, I’ve been there and I don’t know anything different. It’s going to be a new change and a new chapter for me. New beginnings.
Those guys are my brothers. They’ll be in my wedding, I know Fitch is going to have a baby soon, I’m going to go up there the day he has his baby, that’s my family. That’s my adopted family. We’ve bled together for 8 years, that ain’t changing.”
That ain’t ever going to happen, said Koscheck of a fight with Jon Fitch. I’ll move up a weight class or I’ll just quit. Dana White, he’s great about it, he was joking with me at the press conference and I joked with him back and I said ‘good luck with that one buddy’.
If me and Fitch became the No. 1 contenders, if we were fighting edge to edge for the title for the No. 1 contender, then I could see why Dana would say ‘yeah you guys need to fight’ but I would probably just end up walking away from the sport. Because it doesn’t mean that much to me to fight a friend.
Javier Mendez is the only reason I’m leaving, Koscheck said in closing.
