After a report surfaced last week on the Polish MMA website MMARock.pl where Bellator light heavyweight champion Attila Vegh allegedly claimed he wasn’t injured and was being forced to sit out to give way to the rematch between Emanuel Newton and Muhammed Lawal at Bellator Nov. 2nd pay-per-view event, Bellator is firing back.
According to the original interview on the Polish MMA site, Vegh allegedly stated he wasn’t injured and his inability to compete at Bellator 106 was due to the organization’s promotional priorities.
“It’s about business on Bellator’s side,” Vegh said according to the translated report. “People want to see the rematch between King Mo and Newton. That’s why my fight is postponed to January and I’ll face the winner of the November’s fight. I’m not injured, I’m perfectly fine.
“It may be caused by the fact that I’m a foreign fighter, I’m not an American. American people want to see their fighters, but I want give them my belt for free.”
In response to the interview, Bellator has released a statement and a medical report from Vegh’s doctor with information they claim directly challenges the aforementioned translated statements. They further assert the interview was incorrectly translated and insist Vegh himself has distanced himself from the translated comments.
The full statement from Bellator is as follows:
Numerous websites yesterday posted a story regarding Attila Vegh and statements he allegedly made to a reporter while in Poland. The interview was done in Slovakian, through a reporter speaking Polish, and a number of US websites published the story with inaccurate and misleading information.
Please see the attached medical report to this email, a doctor’s report provided to Bellator by Attila’s doctor detailing his injury and instructing him to do nothing for 2 months.
Additionally, Attila has confirmed that his statements were not translated correctly and were not accurate. Attila was fully aware that Bellator made numerous attempts to schedule his world title defense vs. Emmanuel Newton, and that his injury prevented that bout from occurring and that Bellator was going to schedule an interim world title fight because of the delays.
Attila will be facing the winner of the Newton vs. Mo Interim World Title fight in early 2014.