Curtis Blaydes believes UFC president Dana White criticized his recent performance for a number of reasons.
Blaydes dominated Alexander Volkov in a grappling-heavy but drab affair on his way to a unanimous decision win in the UFC Vegas 3 headliner last week.
White took issue with the performance, especially after he claimed Blaydes talked a lot of ‘sh*t’ coming into the fight.
“He won. He talked a lot of sh*t coming in this week,” White said afterwards. “I don’t think he talked the sh*t he talked this week to come in and perform like that, talking about ragdolling people, he’s not getting paid, yada yada, he should be getting the title shot. He gassed out at the end of the third round. He made it to the fifth and won the fight. He won.
“… With his performance tonight and his cardio? I wouldn’t wait around if I was him. I would stay active, I would stay busy. I like Curtis Blaydes. But Curtis Blaydes has the wrong attitude as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have anything against the kid at all — when you talk sh*t like he talked this week, you better come in and whoop somebody’s ass when you talk sh*t like that. When you talk the sh*t that he talked and perform like he performed tonight, you look stupid.”
Blaydes Going To Use Platform To Speak On Fighter Pay
A couple of days after those comments, Blaydes finally responded as he believes there are three reasons why White decided to criticize him.
However, it appears the prevailing reason was his comments about fighter pay — to which the Chicago native doesn’t plan on backing down from.
“He doesn’t like me for three reasons. A, I speak my mind, he doesn’t like that. B, my style, what I bring to the Octagon. I’m very grappling heavy. And C, because yeah I do believe I don’t get paid what I’m worth and I speak on that,” Blaydes said on The Luke Thomas Show. “So he’s just using this to try to make me feel bad I guess, so I won’t speak out again but it’s not going to work. What’s wrong is wrong and when I have a platform and I’m able to speak on it, I want to speak on it.”
Fighter pay has been a major topic in recent weeks with the likes of Jon Jones and Jorge Masvidal currently having disputes with the UFC over the issue.
As for what can be done to fix it? Blaydes believes the Reebok deal needs to go and a proper fighter union needs to be established.
“He knows we’re not getting paid enough and then he takes away the option to get big money out of sponsors because they got the Reebok deal,” Blaydes added. “Let’s just do away with the Reebok deal. … Give us the option to get outside sponsors to cash big money. Give us that. That’s a start.
“… I know this is the taboo word and we aren’t supposed to speak of it, but a union. Every other major sports league has a union, so I think that’s probably the only way for us to really get what we want, but I don’t know how that’s going to happen.”
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