After defeating Joey Beltran during the Spike TV live prelims special as part of last weekends UFC 119 event, Matt Mitrione announced during an interview that he was firing agent Malki Kawa. The reason for the dismissal was over the fact that Kawa had only secured $5000 in sponsorship money for the highly televised fight. Mitrione also also felt that his wife had been disrespected by Kawa in a conversation they had before.
Kawa was a guest on The MMA Hour at MMAFighting.com on Monday and had a chance to air his side of the story.
“I’m not upset that he got mad that it was only $5,000 but there were certain things I was bringing to the table that would have gotten him at a certain number and he would have been pretty happy had I been able to handle the whole thing A to Z,” Kawa said.
“I’m not upset with it,” Kawa said. “I’m just mad at the fact that he didn’t give me to the opportunity to explain to him some of the process that has happened and what’s gone down and why his numbers weren’t 10-15,000 but only $5,000.”
In an interview with MMAjunkie.com, Kawa spoke about normally having three months to work out a sponsorship deal but was only hired four weeks out from the fight. He also goes on to explain why he thinks there was a miscommunication between himself and Mitrione’s wife which got the fighter so upset.
“I never told his wife that anything was none of her business,” he said. “I would never speak that way to anybody’s wife. I might tell the fighter it’s none of their business because it really isn’t if they don’t want it to be.
“If a wife calls me or a father calls me and asks me how much [the fighter] is making, I’m not allowed to say that unless the fighter tells me it’s OK to say that. I was never told that I was allowed to say that to his wife….”
“[Mitrione] said, ‘Keep her in the loop, and let her know what’s going on.’ I did that to my best ability.”
“Don’t worry about it. ‘This is my business,’ is what I said. There’s nothing that you would have been able to do if the circumstances were as such. I think she took the fact that I said, ‘This is my business,’ as saying it’s none of her business.
“I think that’s where the miscommunication came because I’ve never once disrespected that lady, ever. I never would. I never have. I never will.”