Donald Cerrone Reveals He Was Originally Slated To Rematch Matt Brown At UFC Austin
Donald Cerrone likes to keep busy and on Feb. 18 he will be back inside the UFC Octagon when he faces Yancy Medeiros at UFC Fight Night Austin.
The Jackson-Wink man has been going through a rough patch in his career with three straight losses to Jorge Masvidal, Robbie Lawler and Darren Till. His losing streak has only added to the woes of the Jackson-Wink squad with Holly Holm’s loss this past weekend yet another blot on their recent record.
Speaking to the UFC Unfiltered podcast this week, Cerrone spoke about his team’s current poor run of form and he admitted he didn’t quite know what was going on.
“Yeah man, it’s wild,” Cerrone said. “S***, it’s not a thing that’s a norm. Ever since we’ve been in there we’ve been a pretty successful squad. I mean, look at me, I’m f***ing three losses. That’s the worse that I’ve had ever. It’s bulls***. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Cerrone was expected to be making the move back to 155-pounds, but his fight with Medeiros appears to temporarily have put a stop to those plans.
“Yeah, I’m like 174, 175-pounds right now,” Cerrone said. “That’s my walk around weight so 170 is easy and I don’t have to train nearly as hard. I’m not making any excuses and I want to go back to 155, but my next fight is at 170 of course, but I mentioned to the UFC I wanted to go back to 155 and they said we’d talk about it and see what’s going on after this fight.
“So I was like, alright, who knows? I’m not here making excuses or saying it’s the weight or if it’s this or if it’s that. I’m just on a bad run of luck I guess getting my ass whipped.”
When asked how the fight with Medeiros came about, Cerrone revealed that he was actually expecting to face another welterweight opponent until those plans fell through. Suffice to say, he didn’t think twice when Medeiros was offered to him as a late replacement.
“For one, the UFC just called and offered it so I was like ‘Yep OK,’” Cerrone said. “It doesn’t [matter who it is]. I was going back to 155, then I thought the fight was supposed to be with Matt Brown. Matt Brown called and I begged the UFC for the fight and they told me he wanted to do it.
“Originally it was supposed to be me and Matt Brown in the Austin main event, so I was like I want to go down to 155 so I was like f*** no problem, but then they were like ‘Well Matt’, I guess the date doesn’t work for him, I don’t know what the excuse was, but I said OK, now I’m in the main event of Austin by myself and Yancy was like ‘I’ll do it.’ So then I was like OK, here we go.”
Cerrone added he was a little confused as to why the fight with Brown wasn’t going ahead, but he added that he was more than happy to grant him the rematch despite winning their first encounter.
“He’s been talking about retirement and I guess it was just a fight that he wanted redemption in, I’ve no idea,” Cerrone said. “He was asking for the fight and I was obliged to give it to him.”
