Sage Northcutt ready to reveal all over ONE fight withdrawal

UPDATE: Josh Barnett has a point to make:

Sage Northcutt’s MMA career has slowed to a crawl these past few years. After exiting the UFC back in 2018 ‘Super’ Sage had hoped to make a big splash on the international scene with his debut in Singapore-based ONE Championship.

Unfortunately for Northcutt, a middleweight bout against longtime kickboxer Cosmo Alexandre in May of 2019 left the longtime Team Alpha Male talent with eight facial fractures. A severe case of COVID followed and it was 2023 before the now-27-year-old was able to return to competition. Reports of more injury trouble followed Northcutt’s victory over Ahmed Mujtaba last year, leading to nearly another year of inactivity.

Sage Northcutt reveals reason behind ONE fight exit

Despite all the delays and all the health issues, Sage Northcutt seemed all ready to get his combat sports career underway again this past January, with a planned welterweight bout against longtime JMMA star Shinya Aoki at ONE 165 in Tokyo, Japan. At the last minute, however, news broke that Northcutt had pulled out of the fight, leaving Aoki to take on former ONE bantamweight champ John Lineker as a last minute replacement.

Soon after, reports surfaced that some problem with Northcutt’s corner had caused him to pull out of the fight. In a recent post to his Instagram account, the former youth Karate star gave a more thorough breakdown of events. Most notably, he claims ONE didn’t disclose to him that they had failed to secure proper visas for his team.

One Championship is implying that I pulled out of the Shinya fight for unforeseen circumstances. That is completely inaccurate. I sent One Championship the necessary paperwork they required to get my coaches visas 48 days ahead of the event. I was told by them over the phone and by text my main jujitsu coach Fabio Prado did not need a visa since I paid for his airfare flights and trip so he was not classified as a working employee that needed a visa and that my other coach could get in as a tourist so he didn’t need one either.

My coaches were there for almost a week, and I was not informed that two of them could not coach until hours before my match. I received a text from an unknown number that texted me for the first time that day that was a ticket salesman asking me about getting my two coaches complimentary tickets to watch my fight in the audience. I personally believe that One Championship was not going to inform me that my coaches were not allowed to corner me until I arrived at the arena to fight if I did not hear from a ticket salesman hours earlier.

We were also told hours before my match that if my coaches violated the visa requirements and were caught on camera, they could be arrested and there was a 99.8% conviction rate on all arrests. I made it clear to One Championship that I was not flying from America to Japan if I didn’t have my three coaches. I was told before I left to Japan by an executive that I would not have to fight without my coaches. They knew before I left that I would not be able to have two of my coaches. They never told me my coaches could be thrown in prison for any visa violation.

There has been a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes with One Championship with what caused me to withdraw from my last fight as well as other things that I will talk about at a later time on Facebook, Instagram, and with media outlets.

• drug testing
• weight cutting/ policies
• active athletes/ roster
• One’s stability… etc

If Northcutt really does plan to take further complaints with ONE and their business practices public in media interviews and social media posts, it could provide a fascinating test to the promotion’s draconian contract clauses. ONE infamously includes language in their deals that prevents fighters from disclosing company information, even to other members of their team. The also have anti-disparagement clauses that extend not just for the life of an athlete’s contract, but for the life of the athlete, full stop.

Urijah Faber suggests religious conviction lead to Northcutt’s withdrawal

One of the men there to corner Sage Northcutt in Japan was former UFC title contender and longtime Team Alpha Male owner Urijah Faber. Shortly after news that his fighter wouldn’t be competing broke, the ‘California Kid’ sat down with Middle Easy to explain his version of events. Faber backed up some of Sage’s story, noting that both Fabio Prado and Mark Northcutt (Sage’s father) were told they could not corner Northcutt just hours before the event.

He also added another interesting wrinkle to the conversation, however, with the suggestion that it wasn’t just the circumstances that caused Northcutt to withdraw from the bout, but also the fighter’s religious conviction.

“There’s a lot of misinterpretation there,” Faber explained (transcript via BJPenn.com). “I think if you watch Chatri [Sityodtong]’s interview he kind of said the way it was: there was a last-minute hiccup in the visas of Fabio Prado and Mr. Mark Northcutt, Sage’s dad.

“So, 10:30 at night in Japan, we learned that they were not going to be able to be in the corner,” Faber continued. “I got a message around 11:30 from Mark that Sage was not going to fight, and I talked to him face-to-face and kinda got the lowdown on what was going on. There was a lot of miscommunication and things like that. I was cleared to corner, I was cleared to be in the corner if Sage did want to fight.”

“I didn’t actually get to talk to Sage face-to-face until about one o’clock in the afternoon on fight day,” he continued. “And the general consensus was that he did not feel comfortable fighting with a couple of different things that had happened. He is a very big man of faith—he has a relationship with God and the holy spirit—and felt like things weren’t adding up for him and he didn’t feel like fighting.”

No word yet on when Northcutt might expect to return to action. But if he really does feel the need to spill the tea on ONE’s business, it may just be that fans will have to wait quite a while before they see him back in competition again.

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Zane Simon

Zane Simon is a senior editor, writer, and podcaster for Bloody Elbow. He has worked with the website since 2013, taking on a wide variety of roles. A lifelong combat sports fan, Zane has trained off & on in both boxing and Muay Thai. He currently hosts the long-running MMA Vivisection podcast, which he took over from Nate Wilcox & Dallas Winston in 2015, as well as the 6th Round podcast, started in 2014. Zane is also responsible for developing and maintaining the ‘List of current UFC fighters’ on Bloody Elbow, a resource he originally developed for Wikipedia in 2010.

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