Days after forcing a doctor stoppage in his “Baddest Motherf***er” championship match against Nate Diaz, Jorge Masvidal is the talk of the MMA world. While initially calling for a rematch against Diaz, UFC president Dana White said after the fight he wasn’t necessarily interested in seeing a second fight between two of the toughest fighters in the organization. That led to plenty of speculation on what could be next, and Masvidal was quick to quell any confusion.
A naturally popular name was the returning Conor McGregor, and Masvidal pulled no punches on the concept of fighting the former two-division UFC champion.
Chalking it up to talking for attention, @GamebredFighter doesn't believe Conor McGregor would "sign the paper" to fight him #UFC244 pic.twitter.com/hosGQD66RC
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) November 3, 2019
“You see he punches old people in the face cause those are fights that he could win,” Masvidal said, per MMA Fighting.
“He don’t want this sh*t. You know he doesn’t want this sh*t. Dana and them might try to promote it, (but) I don’t even think Dana is going to promote that fight, because you can’t get that guy to sign a paper.”
While the other logical fight would be for the welterweight crown against the winner of the upcoming Kamaru Usman-Colby Covington bout, Masvidal instead shifted his attention toward the boxing ring and the newly-crowned WBO light heavyweight boxing champion Canelo Alvarez.
“In the wake of Conor and Mayweather, it showed me a lot of things that I thought were good and bad,” Masvidal said, per ESPN. “I saw they can’t read us as well as they can read a boxer. Our movements are different. How we cover distance is different. Those things give them problems. I think I can throw enough punches that I can attack Canelo and put him on his ass.”
Alvarez previously welcomed McGregor to the world of boxing, so it would seem he’d at least be open to the idea of squaring off against a UFC opponent. Masvidal, for his part, is riding a wave of stardom he hasn’t seen before in the UFC, winning three times in 2019 and sitting on the cusp of fighting essentially whoever he wants.
Times are changing in the UFC, and it would appear that all roads to a big-money fight go through “Gamebred.”
