Hector Lombard och Josh Barnett befinner sig i olika viktklasser men har sedan länge haft problem med varandra. Konflikten startade när Lombard började träna på CSW samma gym som Barnett.
För några år sedan så började Hector Lombard (34-4-1-2) träna på Erick Paulsons gym CSW. Det är samma gym som Josh Barnett (33-7) tränar på. Vad som hände på de träningarna är svårt att veta för utomstående då de båda har olika versioner av händelseförloppet. Josh Barnett har tidigare gått ut med att sin version som du kan läsa här
Lombard har i en färsk intervju med submission radio gett en annan version. Enligt Lombard ville gymmet att alla skulle fjäska för Barnett vilket är något Lombard vägrade:
”What happened is, I came to train with Erik Paulsen and a bunch of guys down there and he wanted me to suck up to him a bit. Which is something that I don’t do. He wanted me to be a ’suck up’ and come to him, always come and be submissive to him and all that. I mean at the end of the day, he’s a man and I’m a man and he breaths and I breath, and you know. For me, I don’t believe that anyone is better than anyone. For me, we are all the same. Whether you have more success at one thing or the other, at the end of the day we are people. So that was something that I didn’t do. So from that day on he didn’t like my approach to him because I wasn’t submissive enough and I was just kind of treating him normal.”
På sparringarna mellan Lombard och Barnett ska de båda ha gått stenhårt mot varandra:
”We started sparring, and you know time started going by. 50 minutes, 55 minutes. We sparred for about almost an hour, and I was beating him up and he was bleeding all over the mat, and he saw me that I didn’t quit, and I started hitting hard and he kind of like left.”
Barnett ska på en annan träning hämnats mot Lombard:
”I was tired, he took me down without me knowing that it was a takedown, and he was pounding the hell out of me. I was at one point, you know through my mind went through like ’Wow, I’m dead here.’ Cause he was pounding the hell out of me so bad.”
Lombard utmanade Barnett redan 2010 efter en vinst i Bellator men matchen skedde aldrig då Barnett tävlar i två viktklasser över Lombard. Lombard har inte gett upp tankarna om att möta Barnett men nu har han riktat in sig på Metamoris:
”I have nothing against him anymore. I kind of just let it flow. But I do, you know if the opportunity comes and we can compete in a grappling comp with Metamoris or any grappling comp, I would be more than happy to compete against Josh. That’s for sure.”
“You know there is a reason why I’m calling him out, right? I mean with all due respect, but I see myself winning. I don’t see him beating me, and I hope that one day Metamoris can make that fight happen.”
