The Top 12 Most Notorious Gym Bullies In MMA

Bullying in MMA is a sensitive issue, as being labeled a bully comes with some negative connotations. The term is thrown around a lot in MMA with various fighters accusing each other of bullying others in the gym.

It is also somewhat difficult for a casual fan of the sport to understand true bullying within a mixed martial arts gym. The reason for this is because training is generally a lot tougher than your average sports where fighters are sometimes pushed to their limits. This is why hard training and/or hard sparring can be confused with bullying. To an uneducated bystander, there is no real difference between an aggressive gym where fighters get put through their paces and pure bullying.

However, if you’ve trained any martial arts for a long period of time – or particularly if you have trained in a specific MMA gym, you will know where the boundaries are. Although these limits are often a grey area, it is usually very obvious when people have overstepped the mark.

Claims of bullying from a single source are usually unreliable at best. However, crazily enough, some fighters have admitted to their own bullying, been caught on camera, or had multiple people from a variety of different gyms all claim the same thing. Not only this, but bullying in the gym often spills over into everyday life. Therefore if you see someone doing the same thing they were accused of in a gym setting, the chances are that the accusations were legitimate.

The Most Notorious Gym Bullies In MMA

#12 – Joaquin Buckley

Known for calling out an entire gym of fighters who are both several weight classes above and below him, Joaquin Buckley is clearly a talented fighter nonetheless. Allegedly Buckley is a terrible training partner and only interested in hard sparring. If you aren’t familiar with MMA training this may sound completely fine, but you can’t fight 100% of the time in the gym, otherwise, you will be constantly injured. This method of training does benefit the fighter who is handing out the punishment, but if everyone trained like this, there would not be anyone left to have professional fights.

To support this theory, Buckley has been kicked out of almost every gym in his native St Louis – which is a prime indicator of a gym bully.

With that being said, it could just be that Buckley is an extremely hard training partner and does not give an inch, depending on which perspective you take. When put alongside other names on this list he is a saint in comparison.

#11 – Sean Strickland

Sean Strickland is another fighter known for his hard sparring and is well known for struggling for gyms to train at. After being unable to find training partners Strickland allegedly had to travel to other states in order to find high level fighters to train with.

However, most recently he met his match against former ADCC champion Orlando Sanchez (video below). Apparently, before this clip Strickland was claiming Sanchez was too fat and did not belong in the gym. Regardless of your opinion of who is in the right, after Strickland hits Sanchez in the face he becomes intimidated by the Cuban-American when he begins to walk him down and Strickland realizes that his behaviour will not be tolerated.

After this specific incident Sanchez claims he received hundreds of messages detailing similar scenarios involving Strickland and thanking him for what he did.

If you are still on the fence about Strickland, he claimed that he would like to kill an opponent during an MMA fight.

#10 – Conor McGregor

The controversies of Conor McGregor have already been well documented outside of the cage where has punched pensioners, thrown a steel dolly at a bus, and thrown a drink over rapper MGK for no reason. If he is willing to behave like this whilst the camera is on him, it makes sense that he would continue similar behaviors behind closed doors.

On his first day at SBG he floored Owen Roddy with a body shot and also did the same to a 125lbs Aisling Daly who ended up in tears from the incident. Whether this was an accident or not, behaving like this on your first day at a new MMA gym is unacceptable. If anything it is better to be more cautious and feel out your future training partners before you know how hard the sparring is. Putting a female fighter down is not a great way to start with your new team.

#9 – Alastair Overeem

Although the career of Alastair Overeem is nothing short of legendary, he is well known for sparring extremely hard as well as failing USADA drug tests. Overeem is notorious for crossing the line whilst sparring after infamously injuring Jon Jones before his fight with Daniel Cormier. These stories have been backed up by both Anthony Johnson and Gilbert Burns who also trained at the Blackzilians gym during this time.

Another account of this ultra hard sparring style was confirmed by his former teammate at Jackson Wink, Andrei Arlovski who stated “he hurts everyone he trains with, including me”. If this wasn’t enough, Overeem also claimed that he had hurt his own sparring partners in training camp before his fight with Stefan Struve.

#8 – Hector Lombard

Like many others on this list, Hector Lombard is well known for sparring too hard and hurting other people. Allegedly he has a particular gripe with new faces who come to the gym and will try to make them quit.

Strangely enough, after Lombard defeated Herbert Goodman, he decided to call out his own teammate Josh Barnett (who happened to be in the crowd) despite being several weight categories below him, knowing that the fight would never take place.

Erik Paulson (who owns the CSW gym) recalls two incidents. The first of which was when a 5 minute spar turned into a 32 minute war where he followed Lombard and Barnett around the mat to mop up the blood. Secondly, he recounted a time where Josh Barnett had enough of Lombard’s antics so he sat on him for 30 minutes and would not let him get up.

These sentiments are echoed by former Strikeforce champion Dan Henderson and Jake Shields who both claim that Lombard would beat up less experienced and lighter fighters in order to boost his own ego.

#7 – Matt Lindland

Chael Sonnen has many stories about Matt Lindland which mostly revolve around hard sparring and going too far. Sonnen claims that Lindland got into fights with other teammates and also once spiked him on his head.

Perhaps the worst story about Lindland is when Scott Smith came to train at the Team Quest gym before a King of the Cage fight. Lindland was not happy with the way Smith sparred so kneed him in the face and kicked him whilst floored. This caused Smith to miss the title fight.

#6 – Zelim Imadaev

Zelim Imadaev has a long rap sheet of incidents with teammates, dropping into gyms and getting kicked out the same day, as well as supporting terrorism. The main evidence of being a bad training partner was when Imadaev was still training at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. It is at this gym he was accused of trying to fight a teammate in the parking lot after training. This is an episode that was later repeated at the UFC performance institute where Imadaev tried to start a fight with retired UFC fighter Forrest Griffin.

UFC fighter Max Griffin had dropped in at this gym prior to a fight and was warned by members not to spar with Imadaev. He did anyway and was welcomed with a barrage of spinning elbows in a session of “light sparring”.

After Imadaev was politely asked to leave Xtreme Couture he was then kicked out of a 10th Planet BJJ class for throwing a flying knee.

If this wasn’t bad enough, Imadaev was eventually released from the UFC after praising a terrorist for beheading a French school teacher in the streets of Paris.

#5 – Rick Story

All of the allegations surrounding Rick Story are from two fighters, but if true are very serious. Under the instructions of his coach, Story is alleged to have kept punching a fighter with vertigo and concussion injuries because he kept covering up during sparring. Although Story has denied this, he did say “I listen to Pats coaching and I don’t think listening to my coach is a bad thing.” This certainly raises some eyebrows about what really happened that day and is somewhat similar to stories about TJ Dillashaw listed below at #2

#4 – Ken Shamrock

Depending on your perspective, Shamrock and his gyms training methods can be considered either old-school or barbaric. Shamrock made new recruits at the Lions Den gym pass a grueling assault course, which is not all that bad on its own, but becomes a little worse after other pieces of the puzzle are put together.

After this new recruits would be forced to spar with fresh opponents for several hours to become a “young boy”. This title meant that you were a member of the gym, but not equal to older members and would be forced to clean the mats and clear up after everybody else. Another strange ritual of the gym was to always be wary of who was behind you. Spontaneous rear naked choke attempts from normal members on the “young boys” were allegedly quite common.

#3 – Rousimar Palhares

The antics of Palhares in both grappling competitions and MMA have seen him banned from various promotions, as well as being released from the UFC for not releasing submissions after a tap. These were not one off incidents and are something that has plagued Palhares over the entire span of his career.

Palhares former coach Murilo Bustamante claimed that he would regularly injure training partners by both being overly aggressive and releasing submissions very late – a pattern which can be followed throughout his life. The BTT gym felt the problem was so bad that they hired a psychologist to try and calm Palhares down, however this was not successful.

#2 – TJ Dillashaw

Most infamously kicked out of Team Alpha Male (which already has a reputation as being a tough gym), former members claim that he would pick young and new fighters then “proceed to beat the living s*** out of them”.

On the Joe Rogan Podcast, Cody Garbrandt and Urijah Faber both accused Dillashaw of causing undefeated Chris Holdsworth to retire due to giving him multiple concussions. The worst incident detailed Dillashaw kneeing Holdsworth in the back of the head after a training session was over. A move that is both illegal in the gym and would be a DQ under unified MMA rules. This was not the only knee Holdsworth took, as he himself claims Dillshaw sprawled on him and kneed him in the head on another occasion.

#1 – Matt Hughes

Strangely enough, most of the stories about Matt Hughes come from his own book “Made in America” which details many of his behaviors. Perhaps he did not mean to come across like this in the book, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what kind of person he is.

There is no doubt that Matt Hughes is yet another tough fighter from a super tough gym, but there are many incidents when this is taken too far. In his autobiography, he claims that he and his brother beat up his dad for telling them to not ride a motorcycle without a helmet. There are also other disgusting and strange incidents such as threatening to throw his own mother out of a window, tipping over other people’s cars, and animal cruelty.

In addition to this, there are countless stories of Hughes bullying fighters and continuing to beat them after they wanted to give up. Both physically and mentally bullying former UFC fighter Tim Sylvia and various other horror stories.

In all honesty, there could be an entire article written about Matt Hughes and the disgusting things he did. He is quite clearly the absolute worst gym bully in the history of MMA and cannot be compared to any of the other names on this list.

One more bizarre twist in his life was in 2017. Hughes got hit by a train and suffered severe brain damage after almost dying. When asked about this incident he claimed that God was driving the train and did this to punish him for his sins.