Just before Christmas, former UFC bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt relayed the wonderful story of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s visit to Team Alpha Male’s Sacramento HQ for a bit of training. After sweating on everyone and weirding the team out with some strange stretches, the action star got in the training ring with Garbrandt to do some kicks, which is where things went south.
Van Damme began by toe-stabbing one of the Alpha Male coaches for a bit, before stepping in with Garbrandt and accidentally hook kicking him in the teeth. Garbrandt “went black,” and began furiously yelling at Van Damme, who apparently began to cry.
“I was like ‘I’m going to rip his head off, but it’s Jean-Claude, what are you supposed to do?’ All of a sudden he looks at me, drops to his knees and starts crying and is like “My champion!” and starts crying like that, so I felt hella awkward. Hands on my hips, I’m mad, my lip is all busted open and I got that hot sweat, so I just looked at him and I’m like ‘Jean…’ —I kept calling him Jean, I didn’t know it was Jean-Claude—so I walked out of the Octagon, just leave the place, left the gym. It was f—ked up; everyone was watching, taking videos, so from the outside it looked like I hit him and he was crying.
Here is the Muscles from Brussels in action:
Unfortunately, JCVD probably won’t be invited back to show new TAM pupil Sage Northcutt his mysterious ways.