Joseph Benavidez still ticked at Henry Cejudo

HOUSTON -- Joseph Benavidez has a consequential fight with Ali Bagautinov coming up Saturday night at UFC 192.

But the Team Alpha Male fighter is still a little peeved he's not getting a piece of Henry Cejudo.

A bout between the top flyweight contenders was openly discussed and all but officially announced for either UFC 191 or UFC 192, But according to Benavidez, Cejudo dropped out at the last minute.

"I'm not upset or disappointed that Cejudo said he wanted to fight me," Benavidez said at Thursday's media day at Toyota Center. "I'm not upset that he said he didn't want to fight me. it's the fact he said he wanted to fight me, and then when the opportunity came up, he didn't want to."

According to Benavidez, after Cejudo's callout, when negotiations reached the point they got around to deciding on a date, Cejudo started getting picky.

"I say ‘Sept. 5,' and he says ‘not at that point,' Benavidez said. "So if you say you want to fight somebody, you don't pick the date, too. You say you want to fight someone, you don't say ‘oh, I didn't mean that day,' so then it's like, ‘I'll fight him Oct. 3.' And we waited awhile, and then he said ‘I'm not going to be ready for that one, either.'"

Cejudo, instead, meets Jussier Formiga at the TUF: Latin America Finale in Monterrey, Mexico on Nov. 21.

Ultimately, Benavidez, who still wants to fight Cejudo, isn't unhappy with Cejudo for the callout in and of itself, just for the way it was handled.

"[Cejudo] said, in a scrum or whatever, ‘hey I wasn't ready,' Benavidez said. "If he had just said that in the beginning, it would have been fine. But instead he was like ‘do it Oct. 3rd' and I waited, and I could have fought a month ago. That's basically what happened. I never claimed the guy was scared of me. He said he wanted to fight me, he had an opportunity, and he didn't. So that was more my thing with it. "