After a bizarre interview that left the MMA community scratching its collective head, MMA judge Doug Crosby was again featured on Chael Sonnen’s “You’re Welcome!” podcast this week.

However, instead of ducking Sonnen’s questions about the serious nature of his work and whether he has any direct conflict of interest with fighters he’s judged, Crosby was slightly more forthright with his answers.

It wasn’t a complete airing of grievances, but at minimum Crosby shed some light on his rocky relationship with MMA coach Ray Longo and the fighters who train out of his academy in Long Island, N.Y.

When a judge’s name comes up in a situation outside of fight night, it’s typically not for any good reason. Crosby has been a target lately due to a controversial decision between Longo fighter Al Iaquinta and Jorge Masvidal at UFC Fight Night 63 earlier this month at Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va.

Crosby scored the fight 30-27 for Masvidal, who lost via split decision when the other two judges scored it 29-28 for Iaquinta. Most viewed Crosby’s scorecard as acceptable, if not perfect. However, that all went to the wayside when Crosby was alleged to have a tenuous history with Iaquinta’s camp, Team Serra-Longo.

Iaquinta said in a recent interview with MMAFighting.com that Crosby offer him work as a stuntman and he turned it down, which caused a riff. Crosby recounted the situation differently.

“I think one of the things you asked me was if I had ever offered Al Iaquinta a job,” Crosby told Sonnen. “My only interaction with Al Iaquinta was at a stunt choreography and fight choreography seminar that I did at Ray Longo’s gym in 2011 that Al Iaquinta attended, and he thanked me profusely at the end and asked me to help him get some movie work and stuff like that. That’s not uncommon.

“I never did offer him a role. I didn’t offer him anything. I did conduct a seminar that he has voluntarily attended and thus wasn’t charged for. I’ve never charged a fighter to teach them anything and I’ve also never taken any of their money when they’ve worked for a production company that I’m working for. They’re paid by the producers and paid through the Screen Actors Guild. I don’t want or need any of their money.

“I think that if you take what he said and then balance is against what I just told you, everyone is welcome to come to their own conclusion. People can interpret things however they want. If you look over the past 15 years, you’re going to see an unbroken string of fighters who I’ve helped and instructed and kept safe, for free. That’s indisputable.”

As the disdain between Crosby and Team Serra-Longo is increasingly publicized, different outlets have reached out to the parties involved in hopes of getting to the bottom of the issue. Crosby has only spoken on Sonnen’s podcast, but Longo, Iaquinta and other fighters from the camp have provided opinions to different outlets.

In a story recently published by MMAjunkie, Longo declined to go into details about his history with Crosby and said, “I do have to protect my family at this point.” He said he objected to Crosby’s assignment to the Iaquinta-Masvidal fight for two reasons: An insult-filled letter he claims he received one year ago from Crosby, and an order of protection obtained against Crosby by a member of the team’s staff.

An order of protection is issued to limit the behavior of someone who harms or threatens to harm another person. Crosby adamantly denied that notion and said Longo is releasing false information to the public in order to push his own agenda.

“I’ve never written Ray Longo a letter and I don’t have any evidence, so I’m not sure – unless I call my brother and he tells me he has a phantom son, I’m not really sure how to address that,” Crosby said. “All I can tell you is I don’t have any nephews, and if I did have a nephew I would be playing golf with him right now. And I never wrote him anything, so if he presented something to a state agency claiming that I wrote it and then created a phantom nephew that delivered it to him, then I would venture to guess my attorney is going to have to discuss that with the athletic commission at some point in the near future.

“I think it points to a bigger problem, and the bigger problem is, if you put yourself as an athletic commission and you put yourself in a disadvantageous position and you allow any cornerman or whatever to automatically request that a judge be recused because you’ve got a beef with them. Ray’s a fine example. If you’re going to recuse everyone that Ray Longo’s got a beef with, Ray’s got more beef than the Chicago stockyard. It would be basically Ray judging the fights by himself because I’ve been places where he’s got a beef with every judge and every cornerman and everyone in the stands and the guy selling popcorn and the valet.

“The situation you run into is if an athletic commission is automatically going to entertain the notion of recusing judges because of a cornerman waving a piece of paper that might be from a Chinese restaurant from all we know, delivered by a phantom, then you’re giving cornermen the power to decide who judges fights. I think the overwhelming majority of the cornermen are fair and honest people and wouldn’t do that. But if you’re putting yourself in that position as an administrator where you’re allowing the cornermen to recuse judges based upon things that are not checked, and if they are checked go absolutely nowhere, then you’re allowing the cornermen to decide who judges fights. Not only that, you’re sending a message to the judges. And the message you’re sending the judges is, ‘Do it our way or we will have a beef with you then we will allow that beef to flail against you with an athletic commission.’ It’s actually a subtle attempt to influence the way judges think and behave as much as it is a petty attempt to control athletic commissions – if that was what someone were to do. Of course, this is all theoretical.”

As the interview progressed, Crosby’s attitude toward Longo went from dismissive to hostile. He began to hurl insults in Longo’s direction and said all his time interacting and training elite fighters has given him a bloated ego.

“I would advise whoever he takes his advice from to tell him to pop a couple Midol and lay off ‘The Sopranos’ reruns for a couple weeks,” Crosby said. “Here’s the thing: you also have to look at it from his perspective. I try very hard to do that. You’ve got to think about the position he’s in, which is he’s out at the gym with a bunch of really tough customers. He’s out there with a bunch of guys who are world champions – Chris Weidman, who is arguably the best guy in the business. Even in his office, in his office capacity, is around guys like Matt Serra, and those guys are world champions. A 30-second Internet search will find any one of those guys I talked about knocking the sh-t out of me and putting their own safety on the line in real fights against real people. Ray was an accountant. He doesn’t have any legitimate, first-hand competitive experience in the things he’s teaching people to do.”

Crosby was adamant about one thing, though. He said regardless of his feelings toward Longo, Iaquinta or any other fighter that may enter a cage and be judged by him, he would never let personal emotions prevent him from doing his job to the standards expected of him.

“As far as I’m concerned and as far as me being a judge, I’m sure there will be people howling for me not to judge,” Crosby said. “One thing people need to realize is the judges are human beings too. We have the ability to separate our professional obligations from our personal feelings. I’m not sure Ray does a great job of that, and in fact I think he and the two aren’t the same. There’s some kind of overlap, theoretically, but the two aren’t the same. Any fighter that has a corner person, even if I find that corner person physically repulsive and morally disgraceful, even if I think that corner person is a coward and a liar and a human stool sample, and even if I think that corner person accuses people of things he’s guilty of himself, and even if he’s the type who cheats on his wife or lies or cheats on his taxes or any one of those things that I would find morally repugnant … even if that person is that type of person, I would be able to separate away those personal feels and judge whatever fight I was watching as a professional. I think that becomes the issue here where I’m not sure the personal and the professional are as easily separated on the side of Planet Longo as they are on Planet Crosby.”

When Sonnen asked if there’s a way to remedy the situation with Longo moving forward, Crosby sounded less than optimistic. He didn’t outright declare the hatchet can’t be buried, but he did reveal he believes Longo wouldn’t be interested because he could no longer leverage the situation to keep Crosby away from judging fights.

“I think the beef is more of a control system aimed at athletic commissions than it is a personal grudge against me because as long as you have the beef and can get your way with it without producing evidence, then there’s no reason not to do it,” Crosby said. “You can use it however you want. You can invent nephews, you can invent other things that support your claim as long as you don’t ever have to produce evidence. If he did an interview and he said that there’s some phantom letter that I sent him, he should produce that letter. If he said my nephew sent it, then he should produce my nephew. But I don’t have a nephew to produce, and for all I know he doesn’t have a letter to produce either. But as long as he can do that and not be accountable, there’s no reason not to.

“Here’s what you have to think about: With that beef, as long as he doesn’t have to solve it, is his only commodity. He’s a war profit. He doesn’t benefit from squashing the beef when having the beef allows him to pick judges. Why bother squashing it? When having the beef gets him attention, why bother squashing it? He doesn’t want to squash it. If he wanted to squash it, he could name names and he could squash it.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 63, check out the UFC Events section of the site.