Jorge Masvidal: Kamaru Usman never wanted to fight me
Jorge Masvidal unloads on UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, whom he claims avoided a fight against him.
After his spectacular knockout of Ben Askren at UFC 239, many deemed Jorge Masvidal as the next contender for the UFC welterweight title. Instead, he will face Nate Diaz for the inaugural “baddest motherf—r” title at UFC 244 this November.
According to “Gamebred”, he was supposed to fight current 170-pound champion Kamaru Usman, but it was the “Nigerian Nightmare” who backed out from the matchup.
“They told me several names – one of them was Usman. I said, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Masvidal told media members in Mexico over the weekend (via MMA Mania).
“They told Usman this is the fight. He said no,” he continued. “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 Nov. 2.”
Masvidal also took shots at Usman’s wrestling-based fighting style.
“Why do you think he said no, my brother? That guy knows that I’m going to baptize him,” he said. “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. 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,” he added. “As a person, I don’t know him, and what I do know, it doesn’t interest me much about him.”
UFC 244 is scheduled to take place at Madison Square Garden in New York City.