Jorge Masvidal: Kamaru Usman Can Do One Thing Well, Smell Balls

At UFC 244, Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz will meet in the main event. It will be the first time a non-title bout has headlined a pay-per-view card in three years. That is unless you count the one-odd Baddest Mother F***er title, that will be on the line on the night. Early indications suggest it’s going to do huge numbers.

But how did we get to the point where a welterweight non-title fight is set to be bigger than any potential title fight in the 170lbs division right now?

Well, it’s been somewhat of a messy year in the UFC welterweight division. First we had the drama of who should challenge Tyron Woodley for the title, Kamaru Usman or Colby Covington. The decision to go with Usman led to all kinds of crazy things said by Covington (like this, this, this, this, this and this!). And not to forget about him confronting Dana White in a Las Vegas Casino.

For twenty five minutes at UFC 235, the attention was on the fighting, as Woodley and Usman took to the Octagon in the co-main event. But just hours later, following his dominant victory of Woodley, Usman and his team, including his manager Ali Abdelaziz, got in an altercation with Covington in a buffet line in the Palms Hotel.

Covington was then guaranteed to challenge Usman for the title next but instead ended up fighting Robbie Lawler last month at UFC Newark on short notice, after Lawler’s original opponent Woodley, pulled out injured.

That leads us up to UFC 244, where Usman was expected to defend his title against Covington. But after talks broke down, the UFC began to look at their other options. We’ll let Masvidal finish off the story (as translated from Spanish by MMA Junkie)

“They told me several names – one of them was Usman. I said, ‘OK, let’s go.’ They told Usman this is the fight. He said no. They told him, ‘If you don’t fight, we’re going to take the belt away from you,’ and they started looking for another fight – that person was Nate Diaz.

“Usman called. ‘I want the fight.’ And they told him, ‘Too late. We have Nate Diaz, a guy that does want to fight,’ and that’s it. We have the hardest fight that exists in the whole history of the UFC on November 2nd.

“Why do you think he said no, my brother? That guy knows that I’m going to baptise him. That guy has never wanted to fight with me. That guy can only do one thing right: smell balls good. He can’t fight. He has his face there. He doesn’t want to (throw hands), even when he has the chance to throw the hands, and when he has the guy on the floor, he doesn’t do anything.

“It’s not that I don’t have respect for wrestlers. I have a lot of respect to the community of wrestlers, like Khabib (Nurmagomedov). I have a lot of respect for him because he tries to finish fights, he tries to get his hands in there, he tries to choke people. Someone like Usman, I don’t respect his style at all. As a person, I don’t know him, and what I do know, it doesn’t interest me much about him.”

There may not be the UFC welterweight title on the line at UFC 244, but for Masvidal, the BMF title is more important. And he hasn’t had to do any trash talking to get a shot at the $50,000 BMF belt, that will be presented on the night by The Rock.

“It is so much bigger than the title. There’s been people that have had that [UFC] title, that were champions, that were fighters, that were truly dogs. But the people that are in the position now, and the people that think they can talk about it, those people are not fighters. Those people know how to talk – and why do they talk so much? Because they can’t fight.

“Nate is not talking. I’m not talking. I’m talking here, but I’m not talking bad about him or negative things, and the fight is still selling. It’s the most sold fight of this year. The event is almost sold out, and he and I haven’t had to say anything about our mothers or any other stupid things like that.

“This is a sport of a lot of knowledge, of knowing yourself, your soul, your spirit, your physical abilities and mental abilities. All that ‘Your mother is stupid’ this and that doesn’t have a place in the sport. I know that people do that to generate money so that people talk about it, but it’s not necessary. And I think that with this fight, we give the example to the whole world that if you’re a good fighter and you do your work, people are going to watch you, no matter what you say or what you don’t say.”

With less than six weeks to go until UFC 244, Masvidal promises that the fans will be entertained on the night.

“I promise them just violence, totally, second to second. I’m not going to stop until my heart stops or they have ended the fight. That’s my mentality for all my fights. In this fight, it’s a bit more because my opponent has the same mentality as me. He wants to destroy me completely, and that gives me the extra motivation that sometimes you need, that I haven’t had in years, to motivate me to wake up earlier, to go to bed earlier, to eat a little better when I’m not in Mexico, with more discipline.”

“I have to entertain the people. If you have to pay the money that you work hard to earn, the people that work construction, the people that cut grass, have to pay money, that people have an option. They want to see violence, and if they want to see violence they’re going to pay for that and not going to choose him. They’re not going to pick the people that don’t give it their all in the sport, that don’t try to risk it, that want to win for the smallest thing, most minimal thing possible. I’m not like that. I want to win. I want to give it my all.”

UFC 244 goes down at Madison Square Garden, in New York, on November 2nd.


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