Potatogate is far from over.
UFC President Dana White recently announced that Ottman Azaitar would receive a ‘second chance’ in the UFC, months after he cut the fighter for breaking health and safety protocols on Fight Island.
White was previously emphatic in saying Azaitar was gone from the promotion after security cameras captured him and his team cutting off their wristbands and giving them to outsiders who were not part of the UFC’s COVID-19 bubble. One of those individuals was also captured delivering a bag to Azaitar.
The contents of said bag have been a popular matter for debate in the MMA community ever since. Initially Azaitar’s manager Ali Abdelaziz claimed that there were potatoes in the bag.
And recently Azaitar spoke to German media about the situation, where he refused to confirm whether or not he was part of a spud smuggling operation. Azaitar’s comments during that interview were strange to say the least and included the line, “I am not asking your mother what’s in her purse.”
Now one of Azaitar’s former opponent’s is getting in on the ‘What’s in the bag?’ guessing game.
Khama Worthy, who suffered a first round KO loss to Azaitar last September, told James Lynch flat-out that he thinks there were steroids in bag.
“I don’t give a f**k. I didn’t say anything at first, but you don’t pay or sneak people in to bring you f**king potatoes, dude,” said Worthy (ht bjpenn.com). “But people are like, ‘Oh the UFC doesn’t let people fight with steroids.’ Yes, we do. Mad people get caught with steroids all the time in the UFC and they get forgiven and this and that. It is what it is. it doesn’t really affect me, but I kind of lose the integrity. Like when I lost, I took my loss like a man, I gave him his respect. But now I know he’s fucking juicing. His brother just got caught juicing. He just came off his suspension. He and his brother are like buddy-buddy up in the sauna sticking needles in their butts. But again, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It is what it is.”
Azaitar’s brother Abu Azaitar is currently serving a 7 month USADA suspension after testing positive for the hormone modulator Tamoxifen.
“He beat me fair and square, but he was juicing,” continued Worthy (referring to Ottman Azaitar). “So you get someone to scale some building with some Mission Impossible 5 sh*t to bring you in potatoes. Either you’re my man from the Muppet Babies who love their potatoes, or there’s something inside the potatoes.”
Worthy joined the UFC in 2019 and had a successful debut opposite Devonte Smith. He went 1-1 in 2020, submitting Luis Pena with a guillotine choke and then losing to Azaitar. Currently he is booked to face Jamie Mullarkey at UFC 261.
Azaitar is 12-0 in his career and 2-0 in the UFC. Before beating Worthy he defeated Teemu Packalen, by KO, at UFC 242 in 2019.
Before Potatogate there was already controversy swirling around the Azaitar brothers. For more infomration on that read Karim Zidan’s piece covering the brothers’ ties to the King of Morocco.