Over the years, Firas Zahabi has built a reputation as one of the greatest MMA coaches around. This was partly to do with training the legendary Georges St Pierre, as well coaching various other UFC stars as well.
It’s not just MMA where he’s at home either, as Zahabi is a black belt under John Danaher and is known for his analytical approach to grappling and BJJ in general. Having said this, Zahabi has courted criticism from time to time – which is mostly to do with his views on women and grappling.
For some time, he has been vocal about his stance about refusing to roll with women. According to Zahabi, this comes down to respect for his wife – whilst others have claimed that it’s a sexist, backwards view of the world.
This week, he aired his opinion on rolling with women yet again. In a podcast discussion with Subboor Ahmad, Zahabi said “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! It’s absurd.”
This prompted backlash from the Reddit BJJ community with a thread entitled “Firas calls men that allow their wife to roll with other men ‘cowards’.” Here, the forum criticized him for his outlook, with one user named AidilAfham42 writing “I get that he has values closely related to his religion, but calling out others is why this world still have wars over whos more “righteous” I’m a Muslim too and there’s plenty of girls in hijabs doing BJJ. As long as no one is an idiot and an asshole, the environment is welcoming and safe. This is him projecting his insecurities.”
This probably won’t be the last time that discussion pops up and in the future we’ll probably see this discussion again at some point.
