Brad
Tavares jokingly expressed disappointment in teammate Dan Ige for
accepting a short-notice fight at UFC
303.
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Tavares (20-9) is scheduled to fight Jun Yong
Park (17-6) in a middleweight matchup at
UFC on ESPN 60 at the Apex in Las Vegas this weekend. Tavares
was originally scheduled to share the card with
Xtreme Couture teammate Ige, who was slated to trade leather
with Jose
Mariscal.
However, Ige ended up replacing Brian
Ortega against Diego Lopes
on four hours’ notice in the co-main event at UFC 303 last month.
While Ige went on lose by unanimous decision, he gave Lopes a run
for his money, putting the Brazilian in survival mode in the final
frame. Ige subsequently asked for a spot on the highly sought-after
UFC
306 card in September at the Sphere, which he was guaranteed by
Dana White.
Tavares revealed that he and Ige had discussed potentially fighting
at UFC 306 even before “50k” accepted the short-notice matchup. But
now having to go through fight camp alone, Tavares jokingly called
Ige “selfish” for taking up the UFC 303 fight.
“He got that 3 hour – 4 hour short notice and he’ll most like get
to fight on that card [UFC 306] because of that,” Tavares said at
the UFC on ESPN 60 media day. “But yeah, we were saying even before
that opportunity, like, ‘Oh that would awesome to turnaround and
get on that card. And bringing up Dan, I’m very disappointed in him
for taking that four-hour fight. It was very selfish of him, we’re
supposed to be in this together. Nah, I’m just kidding. I got my
fight and Dan got his, he told me, ‘Hey, we’re on the same card
again.’ I was stoked. It’s always good to suffer with a brother
going through the fight week. And doing everything together. But
then when I got the news he took that fight, I was like, ‘Well,
we’re not going to be fighting together anymore.”
As brave as Ige is for accepting a fight on short notice, Tavares
believes there is an upside to fighting in such circumstances.
Tavares claims he also would have jumped at the opportunity to
fight someone without having to go through a camp and cut
weight.
“I think Dan, one – he’s a freaking hammer for doing it right. But
it was super smart of him, it was a great opportunity. And look at
how he did in that fight. Like imagine with a full fight camp what
that fight would have looked like. The one good thing I’ll say
about it, it would be nice, imagine you’re just chilling, they’re
like, ‘Hey, you got to fight, you’re going to win, whatever weight
you’re at, you’re going to fight at that weight.’ I’ll be like,
‘Okay, cool.’ And hopefully you hadn’t done a hard training session
right before that. But yeah, it’s something that I definitely would
jump at the opportunity if presented to me.”
Tavares is fresh off a TKO loss against Gregory
Rodrigues. Meanwhile, his opponent, Park, is coming off a split
decision loss against Andre Muniz
in December, which snapped a four-fight winning streak.