Derek Moneyberg made an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show and surprisingly, he publicly issued a challenge to Sean Strickland. He stopped by Helwani’s studio for a fairly wide-ranging conversation, but much of it was spent discussing his recent promotion to black belt after just 3 years and 7 months of training. It made headlines at the time and drew a lot of attention to Moneyberg, but a lot of it coming from the BJJ and MMA worlds wasn’t positive. His quick rise through the ranks puts him as one of the fastest to ever reach BJJ black belt, among a select group of elite grapplers and world champions.
Helwani actually brought up some of the other men who reached the rank in an incredibly short timeframe, and Moneyberg explained how one of them in particular inspired him:
“BJ Penn congratulated me by the way, and BJ Penn was my inspiration to do that. I knew about that for, I don’t know the number of years, but maybe a decade before I started. I’m like wow, if I ever do that, if I ever get into MMA, I need private lessons. I need to do that with the best guys because I was getting older, I’m not gonna catch up.”
He also explained why he believes that he was able to reach the rank so quickly:
“So BJ Penn was like legitimately my inspiration for that. That I’m like ‘alright if I ever do this, I have to do it the way he did and have private instruction with a black belt and high-level instructors from the beginning.’ Regarding the amount of years, yeah maybe it’s a shorter amount of years. Regarding the amount of time, I’ve spent more time in the gym than most of these people.”
Although Moneyberg might have spent a lot of hours on the mats, he’s never competed in any combat sport. This was something that Helwani raised with him, and he had an answer for it:
“I’m not a professional fighter and I think there’s some confusion on the internet about that. I’m a professional businessman, I’m not a professional fighter. There’s nowhere on the internet that I ever talked about ‘I’m gonna win this competition, I’m gonna win worlds, I’m gonna win ADCC, I’m gonna be a UFC champion.’ I started in my 40s dude, that’s not a realistic thing and it was never my goal. But It was good thing for fitness, it was something in the back of my head that I always wanted for self-defense. I’m a big guy and I’m in my 40s, and can travel around the world and feel pretty safe.”
Moneyberg finished that segment by reiterating some of the criticism he has levied against his detractors before:
“I did the same amount of training they did in less years and I did it with their icons and idols, and I think there’s a jealousy component to that. I do.”
It’s not just hobbyist members of the BJJ community who’ve taken issue with Derek Moneyberg being promoted to black belt so quickly though, as UFC welterweight contender Sean Strickland famously confronted him about it. Now Moneyberg is saying he’s open to a short match with Strickland, after they get past him suing Strickland first:
”I don’t think the guy will tap me in 5 minutes, we have a legal dispute to clear up first. If he’s openminded about that later, I’d be openminded about that.”
The full interview with Derek Moneyberg where he was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of The Ariel Helwani Show:
