Multiple Fighters Same Weight and Same Gym?

[K12]

Does anyone know of any instances where two up and comers, two champions, or two superstars in the same weight class trained at the same gym?


How do you think the gym would handle that as a community? I mean, let’s say someone comes to join a gym as a Middleweight contender in the PFL where an already existing top 3 contender is training, or even the champ of the Middleweight division. The up and comer moves up the ranks while the top 3 contender moves into the top contender position. Eventually, they have to fight each other for the title fight (hypothetically). They’e not going to want to be sparring every day, not going to want the other to see their personalized training, etc. Plus, there could be some gym fights and team beefs.



Does anyone have an example of this? Do you think it would be like “hey, we got the number 3 contender here already you may as well not train here.” Or would it be welcomed to give some competition to their fighter? If they reached the point where they were going to fight how would that situation get handled?



I just think this is an interesting scenario and I’d like to know what you all think.

 

[Richard Fannin]

The most obvious ones would be =>

Cain & Cormier at ATA... they handled it by having DC go to LHW for a while (since Cain was there first) when Strikeforce was bought by the UFC and they had no choice but to compete if they were in the same weight class.
Pretty gracious of DC, there's a good article about the whole affair, and his friendship with Cain here =>
edit: for some reason I can't link it here? If you're interested, just google

UFC's Million-Dollar Friendship: Heavyweights Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez

"Daniel had it in his mind that he would never fight Cain," Mendez said. "He's never forgotten what Cain did for him and has been planning for this move to the 205-pound division for a while. These two great warriors will never fight each other because they don't have to. One of them can make the light heavyweight division."
To Cormier, it's not really much of a sacrifice. If things go perfectly, both men, and the entire team, will benefit.
"I still have a chance to be UFC champion. Just in another weight division. So I'm not giving up much, not really. I'm just not fighting my buddy," he said.

Wanderlei Silva & Shogun Rua at Chute Boxe... they handled it by sort-of implying to PRIDE officials that if they matched them up together in the 2005 MWGP, they'd decide who wins before the fight event starts.
Wand was Shogun's mentor, best friend and idol, so it was the same situation as the later Cain/Cormier bromance.
They just didn't want to fight, unless it was over a pitbull puppy

 

[Trabaho]

Rashad Evans Jon Jones

Koschek John Fitch

 

[K12]

Thanks for the reply guys. I had no idea about DC Cain being friends, I mainly just ignore a lot of back story and news scoops and straight up watch the fights. Also, very interesting that Jon Jones and Rashad Evans trained at the same gym. Lots of good material to read about for the rest of this week.

 

[HuskySamoan]

At almost every gym you have this to some extent these days.

XTreme Couture has Javid and Farid Basharat along with Patchy Mix at 135lbs, sometimes Umar trains with them, sometimes Sandhagen does and other times Merab and Aljo train with Xtreme too.

MMA Lab has An Ho and Bryce Meredith as BW up and comers along with Kyler Phillips, Sean O'Malley and probably someone I'm forgetting.

American Top Team is an obviously one with guys like Johnny Eblen, Bo Nickal and im sure I'm forgetting a couple MWs. At LW there's Arman Tsarukyan, Grant Dawson, Moicano, Poirier and probably tons more.

Kill cliff has Usman, Shavkat and Garry at WW off the top of my head. Burns too?

 

[thecoldbloodedone]

In MMA, Gilbert Burns and Kamaru Usman...although I think that might have motivated Usman to move away from Florida for that dynamic.

In Muay Thai, Buakaw and Namsaknoi big time when they were at Por Pramuk. Namsaknoi was the undisputed champ of Lumpinee for a record number of years at Lightweight, while Buakaw was hanging behind, coming up the ranks as his apprentice. Eventually Namsaknoi was blacklisted from fighting after outing his management for robbing him. Buakaw had a similar situation after replacing Namsaknoi in K-1 MAX and getting a pittance from the big pay days and becoming a star in Japan, continually pushed to fight when he was injured.


In K-1 GP there were multiple heavyweights all training at Golden Glory etc in The Netherlands who fought each other in tournaments all the time no problem. Banged it out hard and then had a beer and yakitori after