The war of words between Dana White and Henry Cejudo continues.
Cejudo’s Campaign
It would all start when the former two-division UFC Champion was passed up on an opportunity to fight for another belt against Alexander Volkanovski. The chance was given not to Cejudo, but to ‘The Korean Zombie’ instead.
Let’s just say the decorated athlete wasn’t happy after building a campaign for this super-fight. Cejudo would call White out on multiple occasions following the decision, claiming he and the UFC were scared. He would even go as far as saying they had no faith in their featherweight champion, Volkanovski.
What Cejudo Should Have Said Instead
White has been very vocal about why he gave ‘The Korean Zombie’ the title shot. There’s a lot of reasons why Dana denied ‘Triple C’ of trying to be ‘C4’. One, he’s retired. Two, he’s not eligible to fight because he’s outside of the USADA testing pool. Three? Well, he didn’t go about getting a fight with Volkanovski the right way.
“If that’s what you really want to do, like you want the Volkanovski fight… what you don’t do is go online and start talking to Volkanovski and calling him names and doing all this stuff.” White told Yahoo Sports. “What you really have to do is pick up the phone and call and say, ‘Hey, what’s the procedure I need to follow to get back into a fight. I want to unretire, when can I get back into the USADA pool? How fast and what do I need to do‘? That’s how you get to fight.
“Cejudo’s been here forever. If you really want to fight, get down here and make some calls. ‘Hey, what do I need to do to get back into the fight? I want to jump back in‘.
This isn’t exactly what Cejudo did behind-the-scenes with the UFC brass. According to White, all ‘Triple C’ did was type some words on Twitter rather than have an actual conversation with the promotion.
“You don’t call people out and call them names on Twitter, and then expect we’re going to pick up the phone and go ‘hey, we got the fight for you. We’re going to do you [and Volkanovski]…’ Come on man.”
‘A Silly Conversation’
Fights aren’t booked on social media and White continues to disown Cejudo’s noisy campaign. He believes he should have tried to get a deal done, behind closed doors before teasing his comeback online.
“Get it done. You know how to do it, have your manager call over here and get the deal done. That’s what I was saying the other night, when we’re sitting there and the media saying, Henry Cejudo said this, and this guy said that… this is a silly conversation. This is ridiculous.
“You’re asking me about a retired fighter that isn’t anywhere near coming back to take on Alexander Volkanovski, who’s in a different weight class in a short notice fight. Why are we talking about this now? How does this make sense? If you really want to fight, get on the phone with your matchmakers and get the ball rolling.”
