Joe Lauzon was looking forward to facing Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone at UFC 274. When Cerrone was forced out of the bout with food poisoning, Lauzon had nobody to fight. He opened up about the issues he faced in the aftermath of that decision on The MMA Hour. “I tried to do my best not to cry.
Of course, I did cry a little bit. I was just so upset because all this effort that’s been put into this. We knew about this fight in the first week of February. So we’ve been training so hard for so long, all of February, all of March, all of April, it’s like a three-month camp. We really picked up all the stuff like conditioning before that even happened because you’re just getting geared up knowing that we wanted to fight soon.
Joe Lauzon Opens Up About “Bummer” Failed Cerrone Fight
I blew off family vacation. We cancelled vacation and I was like, ‘I promise we’ll go right after this fight.’ Then it gets moved from April 30 to May 7. Now it’s like, what do we do now? Are we going to fight in two weeks? Are we going to fight in six weeks? Are we going to fight in four months? Is the fight going to happen at all? There’s so many things thrown up in the air.”
Joe Lauzon also pointed out the issue of his pay. He has not fought in over two years, and was looking forward to a serious potential payout for the Cerrone fight. Although he still received his show money – the payment fighters receive for turning up to work – he knows that he could potentially have earned far more.
“I think they’re going to give me my show money and I’ll get the Venum money. I think my show money is $74,000, so I’ll get $74,000 and I’ll get $21,000.
But honestly, it’s like, I didn’t even get the chance. I could have not trained and shown up and got kicked in the face and made $95,000. It wasn’t about that. It was about, I want to get that win money, I want to get that bonus money.
It could have easily been a $250,000, $230,000 weekend. Very, very easily. Especially because the fights weren’t great on the card. We could have easily had ‘Fight of the Night.’ We could have easily had Performance bonuses. There’s so many ways it could have been a $300,000 weekend, like that [snaps fingers].
I’m super thankful to the UFC, they could have told me, ‘Hey, we’re going to rebook it in six weeks and give you $10,000 for now.’ So I’m super happy, I’m super grateful they’re giving me my show money, but it’s still a bummer.” What are your thoughts on the Lauzon-Cerrone non-starter? Let us know in the comments.
