Firas Zahabi has recently made some comments on men and women training together in BJJ and he’s received criticism from large parts of the Jiu-Jitsu community as a result. Zahabi is the head coach of Tristar MMA, a BJJ black belt under John Danaher, and is most famous for his work with one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, Georges St-Pierre. In a recent interview, Zahabi started to discuss how he feels about men ‘letting’ their wives train with other men in a BJJ setting:
“How dare you let your wife come on to the mats and roll with another man, how dare you? How preposterous, how ridiculous. The men have been so subjugated that they’re willing to let another man grope his wife, wrestle with his wife, entangle with his wife, take her on a trip to a grappling session… They’ve become so weak psychologically! Physically, they’re strong. You can ask him to go and compete and win a gold medal, and he will do it. Physically, they’re strong; but mentally, they’ve become so subdued by feminism. It’s absurd.”
This isn’t the first time that Firas Zahabi has made some controversial comments about women in BJJ, which may surprise some considering his high-standing in the community and the amount of grappling skill that he personally possesses. Zahabi then went from implication to explaining outright exactly why he believes that women shouldn’t be rolling with men:
“The fact that I say that I don’t roll with women… It should be applauded by every man. Every man should say: “Yeah, I don’t want you to roll with my daughter, sister, wife.” Why? It might lead to something.”
Of course, it wasn’t just women who took issue with the comments that Firas Zahabi made as he also took aim at the men who see no issue in training with members of the opposite sex as well:
“And the biggest hypocrites, the biggest liars of all, are the men who say: “No, I wanna roll with women…” I always say that these guys are “higher than angels”, we have to come up with a name for these guys. The biggest hypocrites! If you put a woman on top of me, I might have a sexual thought. It’s natural, I am a man. That’s why I don’t want her on top of me, that’s why I don’t want her on top of me, that’s why I don’t want to engage into these things! That’s the reality, guys.”
Firas Zahabi made his comments on women in BJJ on a recent episode of a podcast with Subboor Ahmad, that was uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
