UFC lightweight Tony Ferguson has taken his proverbial gloves off and is going after the UFC’s treatment of its fighters. On The MMA Hour, Tony discussed how his recent press conference appearances addressed what he sees as unequal treatment at the hands of the UFC brass, and a dire need for health insurance for fighters.
“During that fight week [at UFC 274], I had a lot to say, because during the last year-and-a-half when I was off, I was down to take that Mackhachev fight, and the way that they had presented that was that I didn’t want the fight, or however they wanted to present it.
Tony Ferguson on UFC Health Insurance: “There’s a lot of underlying things that people don’t see”
But it got brought up in the meeting too, that we’ll look into [health] insurance, because I brought it up. I said, obviously, I want insurance. The numbers and everything made sense to me, and they said, ‘OK, we’ll get your premiums together, and we’ll see how much it cost,’ and so on and so forth for the next couple years. So I had previously said that to them, and they had agreed that, ‘We’ll look at it.’ I said, ‘OK, that’s cool.’
Well, I go a couple months later, I was ready to fight Michael Chandler in, I think it was January or February or something like that, and he wasn’t ready; his leg still probably wasn’t good.
But when I got the contract for Chandler, there came a side note which said that they were going to extend my contract, and I was like, ‘For what?’ And they do a lot of these things, and so I questioned it. A closed mouth don’t get fed.”
Ferguson took it up with UFC COO Hunter Campbell, who blanked him. “When I questioned it, I questioned Hunter, and what he said was, ‘Oh s***, I don’t remember signing that,’ and I was like, ‘Excuse me?’
I was like, ‘Yo, yo, yo, I’ve been ready to fight,’ and they wanted to extend my contract if we fought for it, and they ended up taking it away, because they sign documents that they don’t read, and that really pissed me off.
I was like, ‘You’re s****** me. You guys don’t even remember signing a document to have me stripped, when all I’ve been is for the company and you had Conor [McGregor] being inactive and he was going to retire and you guys stripped me for this?’
I was really mad. I don’t want to say too much; I try to keep everything really good.” What do you think of Tony Ferguson’s revelations? Let us know in the comments.
