Former UFC Heavyweight Champion Fabricio Werdum will be taking on Alistair Overeem in a rubber match at UFC 213.
Werdum was fired from his analyst job on the UFC Network in Latin America after taking shots at UFC sponsor Reebok. He wants his spot back.
“You know me, I’m like Nate Diaz, maybe more,” Werdum said on The MMA Hour. “I joke a lot and I don’t think the UFC understands my joking. I have a lot of fans, and one made the thing where he took off the Reebok and put Nike and I just reposted it, just a repost. The UFC doesn’t understand it’s a joke, they don’t understand. I want to come back to my job at UFC network. I love it, it’s my passion. I have a lot of people asking me, ‘Hey, Werdum, when are you going to come back again?’ and I say, ‘I’m just waiting for the boss to say, ‘it’s okay, your time off is done now.’ I have nothing bad with Reebok. Reebok is a very good sponsor of the UFC and I have a good relationship with the UFC, I’m with the UFC 100 percent, and I work a lot for the UFC. I go a lot to Latin America and I do a lot of events in Mexico, so I’m just waiting to come back again.”
The main thing that Werdum criticized the UFC/Reebok deal was the financial implications -- as with many, the deal cost him a lot of sponsorship money.
The former champion says he will be traveling to see UFC President Dana White this coming week to get his job back.
“I want to go maybe next week to Las Vegas to talk with Dana White about everything,” Werdum explained. “I have a lot of jokes in my Instagram and social media, I joke a lot, and Dana doesn’t understand me, maybe the joking is different in Brazil than in America. So I want to go there and talk to him, maybe joke with him and post too, you know. I’ve worked for the UFC a long time, and I’ve been an ambassador for Latin America, I’ve done a lot of good jobs in Mexico, work[ing] a lot for the Latin American fans. So I just want to go there, sit down, have a coffee, and be like, ‘hey, Dana, I’m 100 percent with the UFC, you know this.’ So yeah, just sit and talk is very important.”
UFC 213 takes place on Saturday, July 8 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with no main event announced at this time. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with apost-show podcast to follow.
