Photo by Mike Stobe/Zuffa LLC
Longtime Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight veteran, Jorge Masvidal, was recently crowned the “Baddest Mother Fucker” in the entire promotion, so it would stand to reason that turning down tough fights would put an asterisk next to that title.
Besides, it’s much easier to simply price yourself out of the equation.
That’s according to reigning welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, who claims he was preparing to battle “Gamebred” atop the doomed UFC 249 pay-per-view (PPV) event earlier this month in Lemoore, but Masvidal’s price tag ultimately got in the way.
“I don’t know exactly what was said from their end,” Usman told MMA Fighting. “But I know when the UFC says something like that, it pretty much means they probably came out and said ‘we want $10 million’ or something crazy like that where you know you’re not going to get [it] but that’s just easier way of turning down the fight than you actually saying ‘no, I don’t want to fight right now.’”
Despite the best efforts by promotion president Dana White, California Governor Gavin Newsom pressured Disney — parent company of ESPN — to postpone the UFC 249 fight card while the state remained under quarantine from coronavirus.
“I was ready to go, I was training, I got in the gym,” Usman continued. “Obviously, I wasn’t training as regularly as before that opportunity came about. So after that I started training, I started dieting. That was maybe going to be a 25-pound weight cut for me in two weeks to get down to weight and fight the fight and I was willing to do it to save the event but I guess he wasn’t.”
Usman and Masvidal were originally expected to throw down this July in Las Vegas; however, the “Nigerian Nightmare” insist contracts were never signed. That means the only fighting we can expect between these two will come by way of social media.
For now.