“No need to apologise” Daniel Cormier defends Aspen Ladd coach Jim West for his cornering during the fight

MMA legend and analyst Daniel Cormier has been someone who started competing in combat sports as early as the early 2000s. Thus, he knows stuff or two about old school training. In that context, he feels that Aspen Ladd coach Jim West‘s coaching to the UFC women’s featherweight was not mediocre or disrespectful in any way it was just a bit stronger than what we usually hear.

This past Saturday, West’s fighter Aspen Ladd was defeated in her featherweight debut by Norma Dumont in a rather unfortunate one-sided dominance by Dumont for Ladd. The fight was the main event of UFC Vegas 40 and people’s reactions all over was nothing short of a disappointment for the fans expected an exciting fight.

Followed by that, Ladd’s coach Jim West was put into judgement by the general public, MMA fighters and journalists. Many people believed that the coaching was not proper coaching with well-defined instructions and was just emotional unburdening of frustration, while many found the coaching to be very much there and pointed out the parts where instructions to Ladd were given.

Here’s what Daniel Cormier had to say on Aspen Ladd coach

Cormier posted a picture of an article headlined, “Aspen Ladd’s coach Jim West responds to the cornering criticism: I may have been a little harsh.” Then Cormier tweeted for the captions “This is what I am talking about right here, now a coach has to apologize for how he talks to his athlete? I disagree! I’ve heard much worse from my coaches and the coach knows how his athlete will respond. I prefer this to some of the other cornering(s) we’ve seen lately. #oldschool“

Then, sports journalist Ariel Helwani stated his opinion on the apology by Jim West. He said in response to Cormier‘s tweet “Who says he has to apologize? Credit to him for realizing after the fact that it maybe didn’t work. Win or learn, right? He didn’t cross any line. He shouldn’t have to apologize.”

He, later on, tweeted a video from Ladd’s previous fight with Yana Kunitskaya where Jim West’s corner advice was seen again and Ariel tweeted, “People are recalling this instance. But, IMO, this style of coaching was much different than last night. An actual plan of attack was talked about here. A game plan. What we saw last night was much different.”

Daniel Cormier had another tweet posted a few hours later that said “I’d want @TheAspenLadd coach in my corner!”

UFC on BT-Sport, the premier house of accessing all things related to UFC in the UK and Ireland, released a compilation of West and Ladd’s interaction during the Dumont fight. This clearly created an open forum for how did you find the words of Aspen Ladd coach, emotional and rational or just emotional? It’s a bigger deal when you’re coach, unexpected to be noticed in the public eye, but here Jim West is.

Daniel Cormier retweeted the video while also tweeting, “Thank you @btsportufc , this is the greatest defense of a coach I’ve seen in a long time. Watching this video you see how Coach started, got frustrated, got his fighter to win a round and maybe two. If we live in a world where this is bad then I don’t know. No sorry needed!”

At last, we have Henry Cejudo‘s tweet in response to Cormier’s tweet, who’s by the way now himself invested in training fighters and amateur wrestlers. He said “I love when coaches get real. We live in a soft world.”

It’s a hard thing to fight, but an equally hard thing to coach, especially when you get access to corner advice from your TV screens, not only the fighter but even the person coaching the fighter is judged too. It is one of a kind case that a coach had been more into the news than the fighter in the aftermath of the fight, the question is, is it right to take the pressure of putting on a show as a coach despite the fact that the public eyes are on the entertainer, not the one that works backstage.

Also Read: UFC 267: Start Time, List of Fights, When and Where to watch

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