DUBLIN -- Artem Lobov shocked a lot of people when he called for UFC to release him following his decision loss to Andre Fili at UFC Gdansk.
The dust has settled on the Oct. 21 event, but speaking at the Irish premiere for the documentary Conor McGregor: Notorious, Lobov reiterated his belief that he should be cut following his loss to the Team Alpha Male fighter.
“Now that I have lost to Fili — and this is no disrespect to him — but now with two losses in a row, and the last loss was not exactly to the best guy out there, I feel like other people in my situation would be cut,” Lobov told MMAFighting.com on Wednesday night.
“If someone didn’t deserve to be in the UFC, in the past I was always the first guy to tell them, so now I feel like I don’t really deserve a UFC contract.
“It’s only fair that I get cut as well.”
Lobov recently had a back and forth with former two-time boxing world champion Paulie Malignaggi on Twitter. “The Russian Hammer” confirmed that a boxing contest would appeal to him and claimed he would also be interested in competing in K-1.
“It’s not just boxing I’m considering, it’s K-1 too. That’s something I’ve always liked,” he said. “When I first fought in K-1, I knocked out a guy in two minutes. That’s something that might appeal to me too.”
Lobov went on to say that he would like to compete a lot more regularly. The SBG man only contested two bouts in 2017 and would prefer to be much more active going forward with his career.
“I’ve said what I said about the UFC, but another thing is, I really want to fight as much as I possibly can. This two fights a year thing, that’s not for me,” he said.
“I want to stay busy because that’s when I feel I improve the most. I feel I have the necessary skills to compete with the best, I wouldn’t have even aimed for the UFC if I didn’t think I did.
“I bring in the hardest sparring partners you can imagine and I’m going through the guys. Honestly, I’m destroying people in sparring, but for some reason I haven’t been able to show my full potential in the UFC.”