While the Blackzilians are seemingly on the rise as a team, one man who won’t be there to help any longer is Kenny Monday.
The former wrestling coach was let go this week by the team’s manager, Glenn Robinson (h/t Bloody Elbow). As is the case with most firings, there are two sides to the story.
First there’s Monday’s point of view.
I was blindsided by [the release]. I really don’t know what his reason is. I don’t know if they are struggling financially, or what it is. I’m not sure what’s going on here. He wasn’t man enough to come talk to me himself. Life goes on (Cagewriter).
Indeed, it seemed as though the team had finally put its rough beginning behind them and were ready to turn the corner and become a true powerhouse of a MMA gym. Even though Monday acted as if he was blindsided with the news, former UFC light heavyweight champ Rashad Evans paints a different picture.
“It’s something that has been kind of brewing with things not working out with Kenny and the management,” Evans told MMAFighting. “It reached its limit. It became hard to work with him.”
BE’s wrestling guru, Mike Riordan, broke down the series of events and brings up some interesting points with Monday’s firing coinciding with the injury to Eddie Alvarez.
The Bellator champion explained on The MMA Hour that he suffered the concussion that knocked him out of his scheduled clash with Michael Chandler at Bellator 120 during a Monday wrestling practice.
Alvarez gave insight into how intense the wrestling practices were as well. One would assume that the practices were extremely tough if Alvarez, a world class level athlete, was left feeling exhausted and dizzy.
Monday is a former gold medalist in Olympic freestyle wrestling and has competed in three different Olympic Games. Monday also earned All-American honors to go with a national championship in three years at Oklahoma State University.
He’s also a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Odds are Monday won’t be out of work for long with those credentials unless some more dirty laundry comes out about his departure from the Blackzilians.
The Blackzilians struggled initially with coaches and training partners alike leaving the gym, but saw a number of guys succeed, most notably the career resurgence of Anthony “Rumble” Johnson.
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