When proposed
UFC 291 opponent Michel
Pereira missed weight by three pounds, Stephen
Thompson made a business decision and elected not to take the
fight.
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“This isn’t the first time I’ve had an opponent miss weight and
given how that played out previously, myself and my team ultimately
felt that it’s not smart for us to move forward with the fight,”
Thompson wrote as part of a lenghty
statement on social media.
“Wonderboy” later went on „The MMA Hour” and revealed that though he hadn’t been paid his
show money for the event, he expected that “the UFC is going to do
right by me.” It appears there may be different perspectives on
what “doing right” actually means.
At the Contender Series post-fight press conference on Tuesday
night, UFC president addressed the Thompson situation.
“Guys just don’t get paid to not fight, that’s not how that works,”
White said. “We’ve taken care of guys. If you come in and you’re
making short money, we take care of you. First of all, you decided
not to fight. The guy was three pounds overweight — whatever it was
— you get a piece of his purse if you take the fight. But if you
decided you don’t want to take the fight, — we also offered him
another fight.
“There’s a much bigger story behind the scenes. No you don’t just
show up and say, ‘Yeah I’m not gonna fight, I want a quarter of a
million dollars.’ It doesn’t work that way for anybody.”
Thompson’s stance was applauded by many in the MMA community. The
South Carolina native is 40 years old and has designs on making one
more run at UFC gold. He doesn’t want to risk that chance against
an opponent who failed to make weight. White revealed that while
the promotion may work on compensating athletes in other ways after
their fights fall through — or get them rebooked as soon as
possible — it’s not likely that “Wonderboy” will receive his full
UFC 291 purse.
“What we do is we try to get you another fight and turn you around
quickly,” White said. “If you don’t turn around quickly, then try
to figure out what did it cost for your camp, we’ll reimburse you,
there’s a lot of ways this gets worked out …
“You don’t fight, you don’t get paid in the contract. But we always
make sure that we take care of everybody. We’re working it out with
‘Wonderboy’ right now. It’s all being worked out behind the scenes
and this should all be worked out by Saturday.”