Coach Denies He Left Blackzillians To Start His Own Gym

Longtime striking coach Henri Hooft announced last week his departure from the Blackzillians after six years of working with the team on his Instagram account. Then, Rashad Evans went on “The MMA Hour” and noted that the team is “fragmented.” However, Blackzillians chief Glenn Robinson stated that he is not going anywhere. Robinson added that Hooft’s departure came after months of unfruitful conversations about a new employment deal, which took place when there was a transition between training facilities that led to some of the coaches to go elsewhere.

“This business is run on emotion,” Robinson said at the time. “So if you start making certain changes, it’s a domino effect. So when we realized we weren’t going to come to terms with (Hooft), we said, ‘Let’s let the dust settle.’ I have no ill will toward anybody.”

Hooft shot down any rumors that he would be opening his own gym when he spoke with MMA Junkie for a recent interview. He noted that he went to his friend’s gym that is called Combat Club MMA following his departure from the Blackzillians.

“I don’t have my own gym, that’s not the way it happened,” Hooft told MMAjunkie Radio. “I didn’t leave the Blackzillians to start my own team or to have my own gym. I left the Blackzillians and also we didn’t have a gym to train with, so I went to another place where friends of mine opened a gym. It’s called Combat Club MMA, and we went training there. And I’m a part shareholder of the gym, so that’s how it really went over.We didn’t have a gym to train, so we all ended up training together and doing our stuff. I think that if we end up having a team, I think it will form by itself, but right now we just got all the guys on the one group and training. As you guys see, sometimes I end up training people outside of my group, like Luke Rockhold, Dennis Bermudez, Ryan LaFlare. I like to do that, so it’s not really my team.”

He did admit that he is training some fighters that he has for years at the new gym but made it clear that as of this moment he doesn’t have his own team.

“Of course, I have my fighters that I’ve already trained from scratch, Anthony (Johnson), Rashad (Evans), Kamaru (Usman) and Michael Johnson, so many people that I train. We all train in groups and we do our thing, but at this moment I don’t have a team.”