Tony Ferguson, Khabib and contract disputes
The will they won’t they nature of a match up between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov still rumbles on. The UFC say it’s not happening, Khabib is offering Ferguson 200k to make the fight happen, now Tony Ferguson has his say.
In an interview on Mondays The MMA Hour, Ferguson said, ” I was offered a fight with him in January, I got a nice phone call and I was willing to do it. I looked at my wife and I was like ‘let’s do this.’ I was like ‘ I’ve been training in Big Bear, I’ve got a couple boo boos, but I think I can still take this dude’. Let’s make a show in Anaheim, let’s get some popularity and some viewers and some people so we can get some hype behind me, so we can actually make this thing really big or something like that.”
” But it didn’t work out. I was pretty pissed off, because I had to do some thinking about it and I had to get myself going for it. I was gung ho for January. When he didn’t sign on the dotted line, because he had too many boo boos or he didn’t want to do it in my home town, I was like ‘whatever, alright, cool. I’m going to take a little break, I’m going to eye what’s up. I’m going to take some family time’.”
Talks with the UFC have reportedly stalled because Ferguson wanted equal pay with Nurmagomedov and he feels they can change payments deals with other fighters so why not him.
” I have a contract but I’ve outperformed that contract, it I’d what it is. I want equal terms, dude. I want to be compensated for this particular bout. We just saw this in particular for UFC 207 with Ronda. There’s always changes that are always being made as far as contracts. The UFC has been known to change things over their history, and I’m just looking for the to get this thing going, man. Let’s go. Let’s go UFC.”