CHICAGO — When veteran cutman Jacob “Stitch” Duran was summarily fired by the UFC this week after an interview criticizing the company’s new deal with Reebok, the social media outpouring in Duran’s favor was vociferous and near-unanimous in Duran’s favor.
Near unanimous, but not entirely so.
Veteran lightweight Joe Lauzon was one of the few to publicly disagree with what Duran had to say. Lauzon, who meets Takanori Gomi on the main card of UFC on FOX 16 Saturday at the United Center, posted a blog defending the UFC and Reebok.
Lauzon explained to MMAFighting.com on Thursday that so many people were asking him to comment on the Duran situation, he felt compelled to say something.
“I had tons of people ask me about it,” Lauzon said. “I put out my video blog and every single comment was ‘what do you think about Stitch?’ I think it’s an unfortunate situation, I think he kind of went about it the wrong way a little bit. The interview that was done was 100 percent to make the UFC look bad and make Reebok look bad. That what I was kind of trying to defend a little bit.”
Lauzon went on to say he has nothing against Duran personally. But he also thinks “Stitch” has been around the industry long enough to know what might happen.
“I wasn’t attacking Stitch,” Lauzon said. “But when you go and speak up like that, you have to know it is coming. You have to understand, Stitch has been around a long time, he knows what’s going on. he had to know some type of backlash was going to happen when he did an interview like that. Not that he said anything particularly bad, but he had to know what was going on.”
Ultimately, Lauzon feels the vehemence of the response got out of control — particularly the venom aimed at Reebok.
“I can understand being upset with the UFC over it, but, attacking Reebok is just dumb,” Lauzon said. “They’re just coming in, its the fourth show, and it’s just dumb, hashtagging “F— Reebok” and getting it trending, it was overkill.”
By taking an unpopular stance, Lauzon ended up taking heat of his own. But it doesn’t sound like he’s about to lose any sleep over it.
“People got upset.” Lauzon said of his blog post. “I got tons of hate on Twitter, on Facebook, on Reddit, on the underground, but, it’s okay.”