In the last few months, coach and manager Joshua Fabia has become one of the most controversial figures in MMA.
Emil Meek is now adding to that controversy as the fighter claims that Fabia chased him and Diego Sanchez around a cage while brandishing a sharp blade.
“Originally, I was trying to get a fight with Diego,” Meek told the South China Morning Post. “Then he got a different one and I got a different one. Then he wrote me on Instagram and asked if I wanted to work out when he was in Vegas, and I figured, hell yeah, let’s do it. Then I asked him if his ninja coach is going to be there with him on he’s like, ‘yeah, there's no other way’. How can I put this. I went in full-belief mode: everything they tell me to do, I’m going to do it 100 per cent. Man, it was the craziest s*** I’ve ever done. At one point, Joshua, he was running after us in a locked cage with a real, sharp blade, to make us move.”
Fabia came to prominence at UFC Fight Night Rio Rancho, as the cornerman and manager was ridiculed for his interesting methods of cornering and training Sanchez.
Meek didn’t like the way Fabia has handled things with Sanchez, as Meek is concerned with how Sanchez’s career has been going as of late.
“I’m not going to slam them too much, but I think he kind of lost his grip on it,” Meek said. “I even reached out to him after the fight [with Pereira] and I was like ‘hey, I’m sorry to see you perform this way, and I think you can do a lot better. Please at least consider what I’m saying’. I think this is the problem. He’s always been out there, he’s always been doing his crazy s***, but he’s always been able to supplement it with his MMA training because he’s been a hard worker. Now he’s stepping away from that and just doing the crazy things. I don’t think he’s going to do very well in the UFC with this stuff.”
Sanchez has come out in defense of his coach through both social media and various interviews.
