Though Chad Mendes only received official word that he’ll be facing Conor McGregor for the featherweight interim title on Tuesday evening, he’s already mentally playing out what’s going to happen on July 11.
And reiterating what he said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the division’s No. 1 contender said during Wednesday’s UFC 189 media call that he won’t let emotion dictate how he performs. Even if McGregor lit a fire under Mendes last fall by insulting him during a spot on BT Sport just before his rematch with current champion Jose Aldo at UFC 179.
McGregor has also disparaged Mendes for his height (he is 5-foot-6) and for being a career runner-up. Yet asked what specific thing it was that created the bad blood between he and McGregor on Wednesday, Mendes said it all goes back to that episode ahead of the Aldo fight, which caught him unawares.
“I mean, the short sh*t, I don’t give a sh*t about that kind of stuff, I’ve been short my whole life,” Mendes said. “But, for me it was we had to do an interview right before my Aldo fight and he was talking about putting balls on my head and just being very unprofessional. This is something that, that made it personal. And for me, you don’t f*cking do that. This is the fight game, where somebody could get seriously injured, and that’s what I’m looking to do when I get in there against Conor McGregor.”
It was made official by UFC president Dana White that Jose Aldo would be out of the fight on Tuesday night during an appearance on SportsCenter. During the spot, McGregor was asked how quickly he would finish the wrestler Mendes. The Irishman declared that by the four-minute mark of the first round, Mendes would be unconscious.
He said the same thing during Wednesday’s press call.
When Mendes was presented the same question, he said McGregor wouldn’t last the fight.
“Yeah, Conor I’m going to give you a little more respect buddy,” he said. “I’m going to finish you within the first three.”
The two argued with each other sporadically throughout the call. When asked how his striking would hold up against McGregor, Mendes said that his stand-up was just part of the tool-set that would ultimately doom arguably the UFC’s biggest star.
“I think my striking is going to be great,” he said. “Conor’s never faced anybody like me before. I have the athleticism, the strength, the power, the speed, and I have wrestling to put him on his back to finish this fight. This fight is mine.”
Though Chad Mendes only received official word that he’ll be facing Conor McGregor for the featherweight interim title on Tuesday evening, he’s already mentally playing out what’s going to happen on July 11.
And reiterating what he said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the division’s No. 1 contender said during Wednesday’s UFC 189 media call that he won’t let emotion dictate how he performs. Even if McGregor lit a fire under Mendes last fall by insulting him during a spot on BT Sport just before his rematch with current champion Jose Aldo at UFC 179.
McGregor has also disparaged Mendes for his height (he is 5-foot-6) and for being a career runner-up. Yet asked what specific thing it was that created the bad blood between he and McGregor on Wednesday, Mendes said it all goes back to that episode ahead of the Aldo fight, which caught him unawares.
“I mean, the short sh*t, I don’t give a sh*t about that kind of stuff, I’ve been short my whole life,” Mendes said. “But, for me it was we had to do an interview right before my Aldo fight and he was talking about putting balls on my head and just being very unprofessional. This is something that, that made it personal. And for me, you don’t f*cking do that. This is the fight game, where somebody could get seriously injured, and that’s what I’m looking to do when I get in there against Conor McGregor.”
It was made official by UFC president Dana White that Jose Aldo would be out of the fight on Tuesday night during an appearance on SportsCenter. During the spot, McGregor was asked how quickly he would finish the wrestler Mendes. The Irishman declared that by the four-minute mark of the first round, Mendes would be unconscious.
He said the same thing during Wednesday’s press call.
When Mendes was presented the same question, he said McGregor wouldn’t last the fight.
“Yeah, Conor I’m going to give you a little more respect buddy,” he said. “I’m going to finish you within the first three.”
The two argued with each other sporadically throughout the call. When asked how his striking would hold up against McGregor, Mendes said that his stand-up was just part of the tool-set that would ultimately doom arguably the UFC’s biggest star.
“I think my striking is going to be great,” he said. “Conor’s never faced anybody like me before. I have the athleticism, the strength, the power, the speed, and I have wrestling to put him on his back to finish this fight. This fight is mine.”
When the UFC returns to Canada in August, entertaining Canadian lightweight Sam Stout will be there to get his home crowd going. Standing opposite Stout at UFC Fight Night 74 will be Frankie Perez, a New Jersey native who will be looking to silence the…
When the UFC returns to Canada in August, entertaining Canadian lightweight Sam Stout will be there to get his home crowd going. Standing opposite Stout at UFC Fight Night 74 will be Frankie Perez, a New Jersey native who will be looking to silence the Saskatoon fans.
The UFC revealed the bout booking along with a second 155-pound contest at the event between Elias Silverio and Shane Campbell.
Although he’s still only 31 years old, Stout has been with the UFC since March 2006 and will step into the Octagon for the 20th time in his next outing. That said, Stout’s continued UFC career could depend on a win over Perez.
Once known for having an excellent chin, Stout has been knocked out in two straight bouts. A third straight defeat, no matter the method, could mean the end of Stout’s long run with the world’s top MMA promotion.
Despite the tough matchup, Perez could also be in a must-win situation. At 26 years old, Perez has potential, but he was stopped by Johnny Case in his UFC debut. An 0-2 start almost always sends prospects back to smaller shows, so Perez will need a strong showing against Stout.
As it stands, UFC Fight Night 74 is shaping up as a pretty solid card.
The show will be headlined by Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira, two rising stars who have championship potential in the 145-pound division. Additionally, a previously scheduled bout between Erick Silva and Rick Story has been moved to this card and will likely serve as the co-main event.
UFC Fight Night 74 is set to go down on August 23 at SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon, Canada.
Somehow, even with a five-fight losing streak and the proverbial writing showing up all over the wall, you knew Josh Koscheck wasn’t going to just put his shoes back on and walk away from fighting. Koscheck came into public consciousness sort of dressed as a troll (and still sporting his Edinboro singlet attitude-wise) during his stint on the original Ultimate Fighter.
And he’s still trolling at 37 years old. Perceptively, anyway.
Koscheck calls it business. He signed a contract with Bellator last week and then started seeing the full circle poetry of the moment. Koscheck began his career on Spike TV a decade ago, and now in the twilight he re-enters the space. He believes, against popular opinion, that there’s a lot more cagework left in him to do. And besides, there’s “P*ssy Boy Paul Daley” hovering around out there on the Bellator plains. That’s a piece of unfinished business that’s good enough to turn his pupils into dollar signs.
What am I talking about? Here. Let me get out of the way and have Koscheck himself tell you, in the only way he can — which is to say without a filter, and in the third person.
“These fighters today bitch and complain about money, and bitch and complain about the Reebok deal, but they don’t want to stick together and do anything,” he says. “It’s like, hey, fight your contract out and see what your market value is. That’s how all this came about.
“I just said, hey Bob [Cook], I’m interested in fighting again, let’s see what we can get. And Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin at Zinkin Entertainment contacted Scott [Coker] after our time was up and we started negotiating. Scott put an offer up on the table that we couldn’t refuse, and we posed it to the UFC and they couldn’t match it, and here Josh Koscheck is signed with Bellator, back on Spike TV again. Right where my career started. And if it wasn’t for Spike TV, there is no UFC. Everybody needs to remember that.”
Koscheck cackled back in the day when he soaked a drunk Chris Leben with a hose as he slept off his rounds on the front lawn. That was how it began. He also beat Leben on Episode Six, and then Chris Sanford officially in the Finale. After that he went 14-5 in the UFC before the recent skid, including two bouts against longtime champ Georges St-Pierre, one of them for the title. It was a hell of a run until a split-decision loss against Johny Hendricks in May 2012 sort of set the spiral in motion.
Since that time, Koscheck has been finished four times in a row — twice by knockout, twice by submission. In his last fight, against Erick Silva, he was choked out somewhat unceremoniously in the first round. That came just three weeks after Jake Ellenberger finished him with a north-south choke.
“I went down there [against Silva] and made a mistake and got caught,” he says. “That’s part of mixed martial arts. So, you know, it what it is. Everybody’s going to be all, ‘Kos should retire,’ I’ll hear it all.
“But let me be the judge and say when it’s time, and let me close people around me be the judge and say that I should retire. I have good people around me, and Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin believe in me. And now Scott Coker and Spike TV believe in me. Now Bellator believes in me. It’s just a snowball effect. I’ve got good people around me, and I’ll be the one to decide when I should retire.”
As far as Koscheck’s concerned, everything that stood before his signing with Bellator belongs to the ether. Including him retiring Matt Hughes at UFC 135, and him absolutely flattening Yoshiyuki Yoshida with right hands at that Fight for the Troops card back in 2008. He says all of it, the good and the bad…it’s all ground zero now.
“I think I’m at 0-0 again as a record,” he says. “I haven’t won and I haven’t lost yet. This is all new to me, as it was for you guys who were all shocked that I signed with Bellator. It’s all new to me as well. It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for me to start my career over at 37 years old, and just erase what happened 10 or 15 or however many fights I had in the UFC, and just start fresh. I haven’t been this excited since the Ultimate Fighter days.”
One memory that stubbornly remains is that of Paul Daley. At UFC 113 in Montreal, after Koscheck rendered Daley helpless for three rounds by keeping him on his back, Daley took a swing at the game’s great provocateur after the bell. That incident got Daley banished from the UFC. And the bad blood between the two now dovetails nicely to the Bellator stage, which of late has been all about housing unresolved vendettas (see Shamrock versus Kimbo).
In fact, Daley is the only welterweight on roster Koscheck can legitimately say he knows anything about.
“There’s only one that I know of over there, and his name’s ‘P*ssy Boy Paul Daley,’” Koscheck says, the goading rising in his voice. “I just want to bitch slap him because, the last time we fought in Montreal, for 15 minutes I held him down and beat him up, had his back, choked him, picked him up and slammed him. You know, we were talking trash the entire fight. Like, at one point I’m on top of him whispering in his ear, ‘you can’t get up boy,’ and he said, ‘let me up and fight me like a man.’
“I didn’t know there were certain rules in mixed martial arts where you have to let them up to fight them like a man. His new nickname for me from here on out is “Pussy Boy.” We’ve had this little beef, and we’ve been talking shit to each other on Facebook quite a bit. We don’t like each other. It’s funny that we’re going to get a chance to settle the score again inside the Bellator cage.
Koscheck has been on record for the last decade talking about being a businessman. As a product of the American Kickboxing Academy, he opened his own facility in Fresno back in 2010. At that time, he was driving a 2007 Ferrari F430 Spider coupé. He was appearing in music videos for bands named after classic automobiles. He was investing in many directions, and closing in on a title shot.
Nothing has changed except for most everything in 2015.
Yet even with five straight losses and a chorus of people calling for him to retire, he still knows his own name value because he went out and discovered it.
“My first thing was fighting out my UFC contract, because I’m a business man, and what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s about dollars and sense,” he says. “I knew the only way to see what my true market value is was to fight my contract out. I would suggest that all fighters fight their contracts out. That’s my opinion. In my opinion you’ve got to fight your contracts out to see what your value is. The reason Gilbert Melendez got paid? He fought his contract out. He was a free agent, and he negotiated. That’s the smartest thing these fighters can do.”
Now Koscheck is back. Or, Koscheck is still around, as the case may be, because he never really went away. He’s just going back home under a new set of circumstances, with a circular cage instead of one with eight sides, on familiar airwaves.
“Spike TV is the godfather when it comes to mixed martial arts,” he says. “Just to get the chance to see [Spike TV’s president] Kevin Kay and Scott Coker inside the cage, getting ready to kick someone’s ass…I’m so excited.”
Somehow, even with a five-fight losing streak and the proverbial writing showing up all over the wall, you knew Josh Koscheck wasn’t going to just put his shoes back on and walk away from fighting. Koscheck came into public consciousness sort of dressed as a troll (and still sporting his Edinboro singlet attitude-wise) during his stint on the original Ultimate Fighter.
And he’s still trolling at 37 years old. Perceptively, anyway.
Koscheck calls it business. He signed a contract with Bellator last week and then started seeing the full circle poetry of the moment. Koscheck began his career on Spike TV a decade ago, and now in the twilight he re-enters the space. He believes, against popular opinion, that there’s a lot more cagework left in him to do. And besides, there’s “P*ssy Boy Paul Daley” hovering around out there on the Bellator plains. That’s a piece of unfinished business that’s good enough to turn his pupils into dollar signs.
What am I talking about? Here. Let me get out of the way and have Koscheck himself tell you, in the only way he can — which is to say without a filter, and in the third person.
“These fighters today bitch and complain about money, and bitch and complain about the Reebok deal, but they don’t want to stick together and do anything,” he says. “It’s like, hey, fight your contract out and see what your market value is. That’s how all this came about.
“I just said, hey Bob [Cook], I’m interested in fighting again, let’s see what we can get. And Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin at Zinkin Entertainment contacted Scott [Coker] after our time was up and we started negotiating. Scott put an offer up on the table that we couldn’t refuse, and we posed it to the UFC and they couldn’t match it, and here Josh Koscheck is signed with Bellator, back on Spike TV again. Right where my career started. And if it wasn’t for Spike TV, there is no UFC. Everybody needs to remember that.”
Koscheck cackled back in the day when he soaked a drunk Chris Leben with a hose as he slept off his rounds on the front lawn. That was how it began. He also beat Leben on Episode Six, and then Chris Sanford officially in the Finale. After that he went 14-5 in the UFC before the recent skid, including two bouts against longtime champ Georges St-Pierre, one of them for the title. It was a hell of a run until a split-decision loss against Johny Hendricks in May 2012 sort of set the spiral in motion.
Since that time, Koscheck has been finished four times in a row — twice by knockout, twice by submission. In his last fight, against Erick Silva, he was choked out somewhat unceremoniously in the first round. That came just three weeks after Jake Ellenberger finished him with a north-south choke.
“I went down there [against Silva] and made a mistake and got caught,” he says. “That’s part of mixed martial arts. So, you know, it what it is. Everybody’s going to be all, ‘Kos should retire,’ I’ll hear it all.
“But let me be the judge and say when it’s time, and let me close people around me be the judge and say that I should retire. I have good people around me, and Bob Cook and DeWayne Zinkin believe in me. And now Scott Coker and Spike TV believe in me. Now Bellator believes in me. It’s just a snowball effect. I’ve got good people around me, and I’ll be the one to decide when I should retire.”
As far as Koscheck’s concerned, everything that stood before his signing with Bellator belongs to the ether. Including him retiring Matt Hughes at UFC 135, and him absolutely flattening Yoshiyuki Yoshida with right hands at that Fight for the Troops card back in 2008. He says all of it, the good and the bad…it’s all ground zero now.
“I think I’m at 0-0 again as a record,” he says. “I haven’t won and I haven’t lost yet. This is all new to me, as it was for you guys who were all shocked that I signed with Bellator. It’s all new to me as well. It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for me to start my career over at 37 years old, and just erase what happened 10 or 15 or however many fights I had in the UFC, and just start fresh. I haven’t been this excited since the Ultimate Fighter days.”
One memory that stubbornly remains is that of Paul Daley. At UFC 113 in Montreal, after Koscheck rendered Daley helpless for three rounds by keeping him on his back, Daley took a swing at the game’s great provocateur after the bell. That incident got Daley banished from the UFC. And the bad blood between the two now dovetails nicely to the Bellator stage, which of late has been all about housing unresolved vendettas (see Shamrock versus Kimbo).
In fact, Daley is the only welterweight on roster Koscheck can legitimately say he knows anything about.
“There’s only one that I know of over there, and his name’s ‘P*ssy Boy Paul Daley,’” Koscheck says, the goading rising in his voice. “I just want to bitch slap him because, the last time we fought in Montreal, for 15 minutes I held him down and beat him up, had his back, choked him, picked him up and slammed him. You know, we were talking trash the entire fight. Like, at one point I’m on top of him whispering in his ear, ‘you can’t get up boy,’ and he said, ‘let me up and fight me like a man.’
“I didn’t know there were certain rules in mixed martial arts where you have to let them up to fight them like a man. His new nickname for me from here on out is “Pussy Boy.” We’ve had this little beef, and we’ve been talking shit to each other on Facebook quite a bit. We don’t like each other. It’s funny that we’re going to get a chance to settle the score again inside the Bellator cage.
Koscheck has been on record for the last decade talking about being a businessman. As a product of the American Kickboxing Academy, he opened his own facility in Fresno back in 2010. At that time, he was driving a 2007 Ferrari F430 Spider coupé. He was appearing in music videos for bands named after classic automobiles. He was investing in many directions, and closing in on a title shot.
Nothing has changed except for most everything in 2015.
Yet even with five straight losses and a chorus of people calling for him to retire, he still knows his own name value because he went out and discovered it.
“My first thing was fighting out my UFC contract, because I’m a business man, and what it comes down to at the end of the day it’s about dollars and sense,” he says. “I knew the only way to see what my true market value is was to fight my contract out. I would suggest that all fighters fight their contracts out. That’s my opinion. In my opinion you’ve got to fight your contracts out to see what your value is. The reason Gilbert Melendez got paid? He fought his contract out. He was a free agent, and he negotiated. That’s the smartest thing these fighters can do.”
Now Koscheck is back. Or, Koscheck is still around, as the case may be, because he never really went away. He’s just going back home under a new set of circumstances, with a circular cage instead of one with eight sides, on familiar airwaves.
“Spike TV is the godfather when it comes to mixed martial arts,” he says. “Just to get the chance to see [Spike TV’s president] Kevin Kay and Scott Coker inside the cage, getting ready to kick someone’s ass…I’m so excited.”
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, unless that woman is UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who has announced she will inflict a “devastatingly embarrassing” punishment on Bethe Correia when the two meet at UFC 190.
Rousey isn’t in…
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, unless that woman is UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who has announced she will inflict a “devastatingly embarrassing” punishment on Bethe Correia when the two meet at UFC 190.
Rousey isn’t intimidated by fighting in front of Correia’s home crowd in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 1. She has “love” for the Brazilian crowd’s passion after her previous experiences in the country, per Jimmy Kimmel Live (h/tDamon Martin of Fox Sports), and she would rather concentrate on brutally eliminating Correia from the title picture in front of her most ardent supporters.
Her passion to prolong the beating stems from Correia’s jibe about Rousey potentially committing suicide if she loses. Although the Brazilian apologised after learning her opponent’s father took his own life when she was a child, per Brent Brockhouse of MMA Junkie, the damage was already done.
“The thing is I just want to beat her in the most devastatingly embarrassing way possible,” Rousey said, per Jimmy Kimmel Live (via Martin). “I’m not afraid to let go of the hometown advantage. She’s much more than a hometown advantage away from beating me.”
Last year, Rousey whooped Alexis Davis in 16 seconds, before overcoming Cat Zingano in 14 seconds during their February fight, per ESPN. Ominously, she is planning to drag her encounter with Correia out to ensure the 32-year-old doesn’t cross the line again.
“If I make the fight fast, that means I like you,” Rousey said, per Jimmy Kimmel Live (via Martin). “That’s me at my most merciful. With this next chick that I don’t like, it’s not going to be like that. She’s going to look different walking out than she did walking in.”
Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com commented on Rousey’s reaction:
Rousey provided further quotes during the launch event for Reebok’s UFC attire, as reported by Justin Feck of the MailOnline:
It has definitely become personal for me at this point and when I finish fights quickly that is when I’m being nice, I’m not going to be nice to this chick and she is going to have a very long painful lesson that night.
I’ve never looked forward to beating up someone more in my entire life. This is the only time I will say I will purposely drag a fight out to punish someone.
Both fighters remain unbeaten in their professional MMA careers. Rousey’s transition from Strikeforce champion to the face of the UFC has helped female fighters gain huge traction across the globe. She is 11-0, having won nine fights via her signature armbar submission, as recorded by ESPN.
Miesha Tate is the only competitor to have lasted longer than one round with Rowdy, having pushed her to Round 3 during their rematch at the end of 2013.
Correia enjoys a 9-0 record heading into her fourth UFC fight. The Brazilian isn’t a great finisher of opponents but often dominates throughout, as highlighted by seven of her victories coming via a decision (six unanimous, one split), per ESPN.
She last entered the Octagon against Shayna Baszler on Aug. 30, 2014, so she will need to find her momentum quickly if she’s to challenge Rousey at all.
The confidence and self-belief in Rousey’s words add to the intimidation factor of a fighter who rarely loses control in a fight. We’ve often witnessed her quickly reduce encounters to the ground in order to initiate a successful submission, so it will be interesting to see if her tactics change in order to prolong her exchange with Correia.
Pitbull will have to stay busy and try to avoid constant lockups with Rousey to remain in the fight. It’s going to be extremely difficult to land a decision in this one, mainly because Rousey is capable of ending the encounter at any point with her superior physicality.
Correia finished her battle with Baszler with some tough shots against the cage, but we aren’t going to see Rousey leave her guard down like her last opponent did. Rousey’s comments are scarily assured and robotic—like she’s already carving the W into her record—an attitude fuelled by Correia’s ignorance.
On this week’s episode of “The MMA Beat,” the panel will discuss Chad Mendes replacing Jose Aldo at UFC 189, the Reebok fight kit unveiling, Yoel Romero’s post-fight comments, Josh Koscheck signing with Bellator and much more.
Watch “The MMA Beat” …
On this week’s episode of “The MMA Beat,” the panel will discuss Chad Mendes replacing Jose Aldo at UFC 189, the Reebok fight kit unveiling, Yoel Romero’s post-fight comments, Josh Koscheck signing with Bellator and much more.
Watch “The MMA Beat” live today at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. BST.
Subscribe to the show on iTunes: audio | video or Soundcloud here. Stream it on Stitcher here.
The middleweight contender hasn’t got hands on with Reebok’s newly unveiled UFC uniforms but he already has issues.
“I haven’t put the attire on yet,” Rockhold told UFC announcer Bruce Buffer on his podcast. “I spoke with a couple people in New York, friends of mine, [UFC light heavyweight champion] Daniel Cormier and [welterweight champion] Robbie Lawlor. They seem to like the attire. They say it’s very nice and comfortable. I just saw it this morning and it looked good.
“My worry is the individuality of the sport. Everyone is blending together now. Even with the countries and color variations. Everyone just blends together it seems like and I’m afraid that fighting is going to lose its individuality.”
“It’s a combat sport,” said Rockhold. “You see boxing and the flamboyant characters that [walk] out in their ensembles and big wardrobes and stuff. It’s fun. It’s part of the game. That’s one thing I’m scared it might lose.”
We know Donald Cerrone plans to wear his cowboy hat out to the Octagon, but Rockhold says he’s worried about fighters like his American Kickboxing Academy teammate Khabib Nurmagomedov. The Dagestani lightweight is well-known for wearing his papakha, a sort of warrior hat, to UFC weigh-ins and for walkouts.
“Is it going to be limited? Is Khabib going to able to wear his wig? Tom Lawlor and his walkouts? That’s a huge part. People love these certain walkouts, these characters. That’s going to be no more.”
rampage4realA lot of people asking who I wanna fight next.. I think Shogun owes me a rematch,I should have pulled out of our 1st fight but my pride wouldn’t let me. I will never fight injured again,this loss still haunts me.
I’m always disappointed when fights get cancelled, sure. But there can be some leeway if it was an injury that occured when grappling, for example. What angers me in this situation, is the way that the injury occured, combined with everything that had been invested into this fight. And when I say invested, I don’t just mean by the UFC.
The money that the UFC invested promoting this fight has now been wasted, sure. And combined with how much Aldo has cost them with his previous withdrawals, most notably UFC 176, he has probably cost them more money as a promotion than he’s made them, so to hear him squark about not being paid enough is a joke. But I don’t care about the UFC. They have enough money. I feel more for the fans.
The middleweight contender hasn’t got hands on with Reebok’s newly unveiled UFC uniforms but he already has issues.
“I haven’t put the attire on yet,” Rockhold told UFC announcer Bruce Buffer on his podcast. “I spoke with a couple people in New York, friends of mine, [UFC light heavyweight champion] Daniel Cormier and [welterweight champion] Robbie Lawlor. They seem to like the attire. They say it’s very nice and comfortable. I just saw it this morning and it looked good.
“My worry is the individuality of the sport. Everyone is blending together now. Even with the countries and color variations. Everyone just blends together it seems like and I’m afraid that fighting is going to lose its individuality.”
“It’s a combat sport,” said Rockhold. “You see boxing and the flamboyant characters that [walk] out in their ensembles and big wardrobes and stuff. It’s fun. It’s part of the game. That’s one thing I’m scared it might lose.”
We know Donald Cerrone plans to wear his cowboy hat out to the Octagon, but Rockhold says he’s worried about fighters like his American Kickboxing Academy teammate Khabib Nurmagomedov. The Dagestani lightweight is well-known for wearing his papakha, a sort of warrior hat, to UFC weigh-ins and for walkouts.
“Is it going to be limited? Is Khabib going to able to wear his wig? Tom Lawlor and his walkouts? That’s a huge part. People love these certain walkouts, these characters. That’s going to be no more.”
rampage4realA lot of people asking who I wanna fight next.. I think Shogun owes me a rematch,I should have pulled out of our 1st fight but my pride wouldn’t let me. I will never fight injured again,this loss still haunts me.
I’m always disappointed when fights get cancelled, sure. But there can be some leeway if it was an injury that occured when grappling, for example. What angers me in this situation, is the way that the injury occured, combined with everything that had been invested into this fight. And when I say invested, I don’t just mean by the UFC.
The money that the UFC invested promoting this fight has now been wasted, sure. And combined with how much Aldo has cost them with his previous withdrawals, most notably UFC 176, he has probably cost them more money as a promotion than he’s made them, so to hear him squark about not being paid enough is a joke. But I don’t care about the UFC. They have enough money. I feel more for the fans.
When the UFC returns to Canada in August, entertaining Canadian lightweight Sam Stout will be there to get his home crowd going. Standing opposite Stout at UFC Fight Night 74 will be Frankie Perez, a New Jersey native who will be looking to silence the Saskatoon fans.
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