(Knockout via TRT. Photo via Getty.)
In addition to laying a physical beatdown on Luke Rockhold back at UFC on FX 8 (and earning himself the “Knockout of the Year” Potato Award in the process), Vitor Belfort has now doled out a verbal ass-whooping to the former Strikeforce middleweight champion in a recent interview with MMAFighting.
As you might’ve heard, Rockhold has been doing his damndest to discredit his loss to Belfort, and really, the entire revitalization of Belfort’s career, in recent weeks. That Belfort failed a random drug test back in February didn’t exactly hurt Rockhold’s case, but it hasn’t endeared the latter to a ton of fans, either. Now that Belfort has been relicensed to fight, Rockhold has decided to kick his trash-talking game into overdrive, rallying to replace Belfort against Chris Weidman at UFC 181 on Twitter and saying some really nasty (if not warranted) things about Belfort to the media.
But nobody puts an old lion in a corner, as the saying goes, so when Belfort chose to respond to Rockhold, he did so with concise, unforgiving brutality:
That playboy is still in shock from the kick. He’s in shock. People are in shock. That’s the word. Lions don’t apologize for being lions. I don’t. It is what it is.
For context: “Playboy” is a commonly used insult in Brazil meant to mock those who come from privileged backgrounds, because Brazil is such a backwards, impoverished place that actually having money and choosing to live there apparently warrants a tongue-lashing. But those weren’t even the best burns that Belfort went with. These were:
Eighteen years ago, I was in this game. I had to fight twice in one night. In 2004, I became the light heavyweight champion. I’m so glad that I’m still here, and I think that affects a lot of people, and give joy to a lot of people. A lot of guys, they are just mama’s boys with powder in their butts.
When you get knocked out, just shut your mouth, go to the gym and train. Eighteen years ago, all of these boys were in high school, and right now they think they are going to use me as a ladder? But the ladder is so high, the altitude is so high they cannot breathe. Hey bro, the altitude is too high.
There are literally dozens of gifs I could choose to describe the verbal pwnage I just witnessed (Kelso, victory dancing little girl, Spongebob chant) but I think this one adds a classy touch…
“Hey bro, the altitude is too high” just replaced “Where I come from, people like that get slapped” as my mantra, BTW.