Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship fighter, Sheena ‘Puma Starr’ Brandenburg has received some criticism following her recent take on the promotion’s signature of UFC veteran, Paige ’12 Gauge’ VanZant.
The 37-year-old strawweight who holds a 1-1 record under the David Feldman led organization gave her thoughts on VanZant’s recent signing to the organization, detailing how she is excited about the possibility of the Oregan native’s hype train derailing, before claiming a “train” was ran on VanZant during her stint with Team Alpha MMA, quite a distasteful comment given the 26-year-old’s prior sexual abuse history.
“I can’t wait for her hype train to be derailed worse than the train that was ran on her at Team Alpha Male [MMA].“
Starr, who competes at strawweight last featured under the promotion’s banner at BKFC 8 in October of last year, dropping a first-round knockout defeat to Delaney Owen, following a knockout victory of her own over Ivana Coleman at BKFC 5 in April of that year.
Starr’s distasteful conclusion to her quote comes after VanZant had revealed in her 2018 book that she had been gang-raped at the age of fourteen, and bullied mercilessly as a result. VanZant went on to explain how she had contemplated taking her own life following the incident and the subsequent bullying.
In response to recent criticism, Starr addressed her comments, notably failing to issue an apology or rescind any of her unfounded claims in regards to VanZant’s time with Sacramento based facility, Team Alpha MMA.
“This is absolutely horrible,” Starr wrote. “I had no idea about her (Paige VanZant’s) assault. Please nobody think that the quote that was made had anything to do with this as it was just brought to my attention TODAY, also I would NEVER take a stab at anyone in regards to being legitimately assaulted and if I knew of this prior I would have given a different quote COMPLETELY. What the rumour is w (with) [Team] Alpha male [MMA] is what SHE did. Her sexual assault is what someone ELSE did to her… totally different ya know, don’t twist it.“
Whilst Starr addressed the issue regarding her unpalatable and unarrested comments about VanZant, she replied to a comment on the above post, claiming “oh it is” in response to a commenter who wrote, “I still think what you said was funny as F*CK.”