Former UFC welterweight world champion Sean Strickland recently bumped into Derek Moneyberg and he immediately took to social media to criticise him, even with him still in the background of the video. He’s far from the first figure in the BJJ and MMA world to speak out against Moneyberg, particularly since he was recently promoted to BJJ black belt after three and a half years of training. That promotion sparked controversy, primarily because it’s significantly quicker than the vast majority of people ever reach that rank. In fact, there’s only a handful of people who’ve achieved the rank any faster and they’re all elite competitors.
The criticism of that promotion actually grew to such an extent that Moneyberg addressed it directly, claiming that ‘the general public in this sport is extraordinarily low functioning.’ That hasn’t managed to silence some of his critics though and many of them still point to the fact that he has never competed and no footage of him sparring in a competitive fashion exists. These questions have even been raised to Gordon Ryan, who actually defended the promotion himself. He claimed that “If he had to compete against an average black belt who’s been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 10 years and he does it for an hour in a random gym in Kentucky… he’d probably beat him up to be honest.”
Ryan did say that he thinks that training with the general public is “important to do just for your personal journey in Jiu-Jitsu” though, and this is something that Moneyberg doesn’t do. Instead he takes private classes with a number of BJJ and MMA legends like Royce Gracie, Lyoto Machida, and Jake Shields. This is actually one of the things that Strickland took issue with in his video, but for a very different reason. Strickland argued that:
”This man takes advantage of low-paid UFC fighters who are great men, who are just trying to make their mortgage and live a life… And he takes advantage of these men and he uses their platform to peddle financial scams, and he sues people, and what he does is so dishonest and so scummy…”
Sean Strickland shared the video of his short interaction with Derek Moneyberg and his criticism of him in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
