Ladd’s coach goes after Tate over cheating claims

Jim West went after the former UFC champ after claims his fighter tried to cheat on the scales.

This past weekend’s UFC Vegas 38 lost out on a bout between Aspen Ladd and Macy Chiasson after Ladd was pulled from competition due to a bad weight cut. At the show’s weigh-ins Ladd missed badly before a second attempt put her just a pound over.

However, despite ending with a narrow miss on the scales, her demeanour during that process was cause for concern. The young fighter trembled behind a sheet that was provided to her while seemingly struggling to remain upright.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Ladd shake on the scales. The same thing happened in 2019 before she faced Germaine de Randamie.

Someone who wasn’t a fan of Ladd’s recent weigh-in performance is former UFC bantamweight champion Miesha Tate. She took to Twitter to lambaste Ladd with accusations of cheating. Tate suggested that Ladd was trying to affect her stance in a way that might produce a false reading on the scales.

Ladd’s head coach Jim West soon fired back at Tate, calling her a ‘coward’ in the process.

“Please try and stand still, with hands in the air while dehydrated, dizzy and nauseous all while trying to hold yourself because you are bleeding,” said West—referencing Ladd’s revelation that being on her period had affected her weight cut for this fight. “You better hope you never have to fight Aspen. Oh wait you probably won’t you coward.”

Tate and West then engaged in some back and forth, resulting in West deleting a tweet that re-iterated his claim that the MMA pioneer was a coward. Tate preserved that tweet and charged that West was actually the coward in this situation.

Tate returned to competition earlier this year with a win over Marion Reneau. She is now slated to headline opposite Ketlen Vieira on November 20.