“Ilya said Sage’s dad was talking crap from the start…that’s a joke. What his dad said was if that guy knew his own neck was hurting, which no one believed, he should have called Sage and cancelled everyone driving all the way across town and kept them from wasting their time. Him saying he was acting like everyone owed him something? That’s also stupid. No one acted like that, we simply thought Sage was going over to spar with some world Muay Thai champion, so why is he giving Sage a bunch of excuses and whining?”
“In between rounds he said since he’s sparring in some 10 ft wide by 15 ft long rectangle, circle off of the cage/wall since there’s no real room to move.
“The main issue was some wannabe 2-1 amateur Muay Thai fighter named Terrance Johnson telling Ilya to knee Sage low in the legs when it was already agreed upon not to throw any knees at all (or elbows to the face).”
“In between rounds, there was some other guy, some little amateur guy that was telling him (Grad), ‘Why don’t you knee him, why don’t you this?’ That’s actually what set me off at the very end because we had said, ‘Hey, no knees, he has a fight coming up, you know, no knees and no elbows.
“My 17-year-old comes over and goes, ‘Hey that guy that guy back there just told him in between rounds to knee him. He goes, ‘I got it on video.’ And I confronted them about it, and they just went ballistic.”
“For that guy to sit there and say that he in some way, shape, or form was trying to give Sage advice, you know, like from a coach point of view, that’s totally misrepresented. Sage, in two minutes flat, would’ve knocked that guy out. If you see the video, he’s totally 25-35 percent. It’s a joke. And the guy looked like a robot out there, trying to dance around his little Muay Thai stuff. I didn’t believe he was a Muay Thai champion. I just kinda laughed, we all did. That guy wasn’t there to coach Sage, help Sage, he was there to be a live body. Our guy, our jiu-jitsu Gracie guy, he goes, ‘He’s supposed to be a world champ, hit him as hard as you want, that’s what he knows he’s there for, so take it to him.’
“And that was the furthest thing from the truth.”
