Gegard Mousasi is ready for a fight outside the cage if that’s what it comes down to.
Professional Fighters League’s (PFL) new era has gotten off to a terrible start for one of the most unheralded legends in mixed martial arts (MMA) history. The former Strikeforce and Bellator champion, Mousasi, is officially a part of PFL after Bellator’s acquisition late last year. However, he’s been stuck in limbo without communication ever since.
Mousasi, 38, recently claimed he’s been iced out by PFL without any responses to requests to fight and a belief that he’s too expensive for the promotion to want to oblige the new contract he signed amid the merger. After no progress since speaking out, Mousasi might have to get lawyers involved, which he’s willing to do.
“They said that the amount [of money I get paid], we don’t want to cut you, it’s so much, that it’s better for you, I don’t know, look somewhere else or do something else,” Mousasi said on The MMA Hour.
“At this moment, I’m like, listen, if someone doesn’t want me, I’m like, ‘F—k it. Let’s go,’” he continued. “But my team around me is like, ‘F—k it, we’ll sue them.’ If it was up to me, I would just go, but I don’t know. We’ll see. The team around me is not that happy. So I think there is going to be legal action against them.
“Yeah, [I feel disrespected] because they don’t even want to pick up the phone and talk to us,” Mousasi concluded. “It’s not even funny anymore. It’s the worst organization so far. I’ve fought in a lot of organizations, this is the worst one.”
The MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani reported on the episode with Mousasi before their conversation that he’d heard from PFL and was told they were unaware of the contractual change that happened during the Bellator process. Ultimately, the seasoned 60-fight veteran (49-9-2) isn’t buying it.
“My contract is a couple million,” Mousasi said. “Whatever deal you make, it’s not possible that someone slipped a letter between the other letters, and no one found out. Everything has to be signed by lawyers. So whatever they did, they knew about it. They said they’d take everyone from [Bellator]. So they took me, they knew the contract, and now they’re like, ‘Well, they slipped it in.’ You’re not buying McDonald’s, you’re buying a million-dollar company. It’s not believable that they didn’t know and someone wanted to f—k with them, so they did a very fast contract and no one knew about it. It’s just not true. Everything has to go through lawyers.
“I don’t know why you even took Bellator if you don’t have the money to let the fighters fight,” he concluded.