Jorge Masvidal may not be a member of the UFC middleweight division, but he is good friends and ATT training partners with the division’s No. 1 contender, Yoel Romero, and he’s made no secret regarding his disgust with what is going on at 185 pounds.
“I’m being the voice for the people that are frustrated with a lot of these cowards in this sport,” Masvidal said Monday on The MMA Hour. “I don’t got to spell it for you — people just blatantly dodging other people, that’s coward sh*t. You know what I’m saying? That’s hashtag ho status. It’s f*cking mind-blowing.”
Masvidal was asked if he was referring to UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping, whose on-again, off-again fight against ex-welterweight titleholder Georges St-Pierre has thrust the UFC’s 185-pound division into uncertainly due to a logjam of contenders building at the top and the still-to-be-determined status of Bisping vs. St-Pierre.
“B*tch-ping? Yeah, that’s who I’m referring to,” Masvidal responded. “But it’s not just him, there’s a bunch of dudes. It’s just, he’s probably leading the front, you know? He’s a frontrunner. And I don’t even want to talk about him on this show because I’m not going to make that dude famous. We’re not going to make that dude famous. Let him go out there, win some fights, let him generate his own name. I wasn’t even going to say that b*tch’s name.”
Masvidal isn’t the first fighter to express his displeasure with Bisping vs. St-Pierre, or the UFC’s recent matchmaking trends under the WME-IMG era. Several top middleweights including Luke Rockhold, Robert Whittaker, Ronaldo Souza, and Gegard Mousasi have criticized the St-Pierre booking, to the point where UFC president Dana White has publicly expressed the UFC’s desire to move on.
Bisping himself said this week on his podcast that the fight was in a rocky place and may ultimately be canceled, with the UFC instead opting to stage an interim middleweight title fight while Bisping recovers from a lingering knee injury. But as a close friend of Romero’s — whose title shot has eluded him despite a 7-0 UFC run — Masvidal isn’t buying it when he hears Bisping explain why he should fight St-Pierre or why he needs more time before the next defense of his belt.
“Back in the day, you used to have to fight three or four fights in one night with no dodging nobody, and that’s what the sport got built on,” Masvidal said. “And a lot of the guys who came in after they saw that had that similar mindset of just, compete and fight the best and keep winning.
“Nowadays it’s like, fight the guy that you can beat, or this and that. So, it’s weird, man. When you’re up-and-coming in your career, yes, maybe you have to dodge certain guys. ‘Hey, my wrestling isn’t good yet, let me get it on-point and then I’ll come back there,’ or, ‘I’m not going to fight that guy right now,’ because whatever, when you’re up-and-coming. But once you’re already at the top of your game, you’re in there, man. That’s it. There’s no dodging fighters. What’s wrong with you? That’s the biggest act of cowardice, faking injuries.”
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