Rose Namajunas explains why she spoke out about Roufusport concerns

Rose Namajunas

To hear Rose Namajunas tell it, she wasn’t exactly relishing the chance to speak out about what she perceived as a dangerous gym culture at Duke Roufus’ Roufusport gym in Milwaukee.

It was only when she saw video of the fight that cost amateur kickboxer Dennis Munson Jr. his life that she felt compelled to, especially since, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like silence was part of the problem.

“If anything, I think the culture may explain why it’s been kept quiet for so long, and why nobody has said anything about it,” Namajunas told MMAjunkie. “And the culture makes sense to me with just what I’ve seen in the video with (Roufusport coach Scott) Cushman slapping (Munson) and picking him up by the neck and stuff like that. It sucks because I wish I would have said something sooner, but the culture does kind of put pressure on you to not say anything and not complain about much.”

Namajunas was one of the first fighters to make allegations of an abusive, toxic training atmosphere at Roufusport, but she wasn’t the only one. Roufus responded to those claims in an interview with MMAjunkie earlier this week, saying he was surprised that Namajunas was leading this charge, since she’d been back to his gym to train in the months following Munson’s death.

But according to Namajunas, the fact that she showed up and got a few workouts in when she was back in town wasn’t necessarily an endorsement of the gym.

“I was there for a week,” she said. “People think that I went back and trained for a long, long time or something. I was just in town and I had to do what I had to do to just not stir the pot. Just come in, come out, keep to myself. And I did feel like I was treated differently, because I was about to be on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ and I’m in the UFC and all that. But while I was there, I did have people come up to me and start talking to me about some of the issues.”

While Namajunas didn’t necessarily disagree with Roufus’ claim that the gym culture and training standards have changed since she left the gym, she did say that she thought her elevated position in the MMA world had at least something to do with the changes she witnessed as far as her own treatment, which also made her consider whether she didn’t have an obligation to use that position to encourage a positive change.

Once she saw the video of Munson’s fight, and read the article detailing the issues surrounding it, she felt compelled to act.

“With some power comes some responsibility,” Namajunas said. “When I left, I thought, ‘I have to do what’s best for me and if other people want to go there, that’s up to them.’ But now I wonder if that was the right or wrong choice.”

These days, Namajunas gets her work done with Trevor Wittman at the Grudge Training Center in Colorado. She’s “much happier” there, she said, and the environment is far more positive. In raising issues about Roufusport, she said, she didn’t want to distract from the issue of Munson’s death by inviting a war of words among pro fighters and their former coaches, which then overshadows the original issue.

“I don’t mean for the waters to be muddied with all this stuff about the gym culture there, but I do think it’s important for people to have that information so they can make their own judgment,” Namajunas said. “… But now that somebody’s life is lost, it’s unfortunate. Now I’m trying to do what I can do so that somebody is held accountable for this young man’s life that didn’t have to be taken.”