Sean Strickland has taken a dig at Aspen Laddâs relationship with her head coach Jim West and also took a swipe at Rose Namajunasâ relationship with coach Pat Barry in the process.
Sean Stricklandâs Twitter page could serve as material for the Cards Against Humanity game. Whether itâs porn stars, road rage, streetfighting challenges, or homophobia, no topic is off-limits for MMAâs wildman. Thursday, we learned that this includes the personal relationships of his peers.
UFC womenâs bantamweight Aspen Laddâs relationship with her coach Jim West went under public scrutiny last year when West chewed out Ladd between rounds of her loss to Norma Dumont last year at UFC Vegas 40. His tone was considered so harsh that many people spoke out against Westâs treatment of Ladd, including Miesha Tate.
Tate said that she was speaking from her own personal experience of what it can be like in a relationship with a coach/trainer and that she can recognize the signs of abuse. Ladd dismissed Tateâs comments as attention-seeking and later said that sheâd be willing to fight Tate for free.
There have been no further stories regarding Laddâs & Westâs relationship since West apologized for his conduct in Laddâs corner last October. Nevertheless, Strickland was inspired to send out the following tweet Thursday.
âSooooooooooo Iâm pretty sure @TheAspenLadd is suffering from Stockholm syndromeâŠâŠâŠ lmao!!!I didnât really care about the corner
video but when you add some other facts to the situation itâs a little fucking creepy lmao!!!â
Strickland would then post a follow-up tweet to lend more insight into the information that prompted his initial tweet.
âWomen are very easy targets for male coaches, automatically assume weird father role which turns into a hero worship complex. The fact you started to train with him at what 12? 100 percent grooming sexual predator. Tell me my facts are wrong and Iâll apologize now. @TheAspenLaddâ
Strickland would close by also referencing Rose Namajunasâ relationship with Barry. The couple has a 13-year age gap between them and reportedly met when Namajunas was 14 years old and Barry was 27.
âIs Jim West and Pat Berry (sic) the Weinstine of MMA? Or is Michael Jackson a better comparisonâŠ@netflix is currently contacting @TheAspenLadd and @rosenamajunas for a TV series lol!!! OK, Iâm done gotta sparâŠâ Strickland concluded.
Ladd is coming off a second consecutive loss, this time to Raquel Pennington who defeated Ladd at UFC 273 via unanimous decision. This made for the third defeat in four fights for the 27-year-old.
Strickland has enough to worry about with his professional life, as he will be taking on rising hype train Alex Pereira this July at UFC 277 in a bout that many believe could serve as a middleweight title eliminator.
Proceed with caution Strickland Pat Barry hits very fucking hard and thatâs a good chance these guys can run into each other at a show
Geez and people thought Colby took things a bit too far
Thats what i thought also
umkay
lol kind of has a point
Rose is on top right now so the fickle simps are in full support mode.
Iâd groom thatâŠ
Pat is NOT a predator just because he fell in love with 13 yr old Rose the moment he saw her and became her life partner on her 18th birthday. Aint NOTHIN happened before then h8ers!
Youâd have to go back about 10 years to be where Pat started.
Eh, she wouldnât fuck me with Nytronâs pussy.
Rose Namajunas has always had the attention of the public. She first broke out when she was just 25 â at the time she had defeated the reigning champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Today Rose is 29 years old and she successfully recaptured the strawweight title having defeated Weili Zhang in April of this year.
But Rose is quite often mentioned in another context. While Roseâs main mma coach is the widely respected and coveted Trevor Wittman, a lot of people throw a serious side eye toward Roseâs longtime partner and former UFC fighter and kickboxer Pat Barry.
Pat celebrated his 42nd birthday just last month. Meanwhile Rose, 13 years his junior, is just 29. But this of course isnât that shocking in our modern day and age, what is however â is that the two had met many many years ago. Hereâs how Rose described coming into Duke Roufusâ kickboxing gym on her joint appearance with Pat on Joe Roganâs ultra popular podcast:
Rose: Yeah I did one season of wrestling as a senior and then I did kickboxing and I met Pat at Duke Roufusâ gym in Milwaukee and thatâs kinda where I saw guys like him all those dudes doing it as professions and I was like maybe I can do it as a profession too, you know.
Joe: And how old were you at the time?
Rose: I first walked into Dukeâs gym I was like â I think I was 14, and then I left âcause of âcause I had other obligations and like stopped training for a while but I was still doing other sports and stuff. And I came back when I was like 17.
Joe: So you were really thinking at the time, maybe this was something I could do as a career?
Rose: You know, not for sure but definitely like I saw â I was always gonna be involved in martial arts no matter what as a hobby⊠no matter what
The really shocking part is hard to miss â the two appear to have met when Namajunas was just 14 years old. But itâs unclear if the two were close right off the bat because Namajunas later said that a pivotal moment in her MMA career was the fight between Cris Cyborg and Gina Carano. That fight took place in August of 2009 when Rose was about a month into 17 years old. Hereâs how she described that moment:
