Gilbert Burns is eyeing a fight with Jorge Masvidal but is keeping his options open.
There was a shakeup at the top of the UFC welterweight division on Saturday night when Leon Edwards defeated Kamaru Usman. The longtime champion Usman was knocked out and a new champion was crowned. The possibility that Usman will get an immediate rematch is high and if that is the case, the rest of the top five fighters in that weight class will need to look elsewhere for their next fights.
One man who has been asking for a fight is Gilbert Burns. He was been wanting to stay active since his last bout against Khamzat Chimaev. He has been calling for Jorge Masvidal and it seemed that the two had a verbal agreement to fight. Now Masvidal is saying there is no deal and he needs more time to heal from a wrist injury according to Burns.
“The fight was offered for Nov 12 at MSG but he had a procedure on his wrist and he said he was not ready for November but he will be ready for December, January. So if the UFC is not lying to me and I don’t believe that they are, that’s what he said, he will be ready December, January.” Burns told The AllStar. ” I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest, you know that was his words that I heard. For me it’s super simple, you want to fight we fight, you don’t want to fight we don’t fight. You’re not a kid anymore. No one’s pressuring you to fight if you don’t want to fight we don’t have to fight, there are a lot of guys out there for me to fight.”
If Jorge Masvidal is not available, Gilbert Burns Has Other options
Burns is currently ranked fourth in a stacked division and would be open to other options if Masvidal is unavailable. He mentioned wanting to face the winner of the upcoming bout between Sean Brady and Belal Muhammad. He also mentioned Geoff Neal as a possible candidate. He did not however mention Colby Covington and the reasoning behind that is because he heard that Covington will be out with injury for a long time.
“I think Colby got a very bad injury with the sucker punch from Masvidal, he got surgery and for as long as I know he isn’t available until March next year,” Burns said. “That’s what the rumor was that he was very bad, he had a neck injury that nerves were very bad. He lost a little bit movemnets on the neck. He kind of broke his jaw again, he had surgery, and the surgery didn’t go good, he’s still doing the PT, he’s not training. If everything goes okay he’s only back in March, that’s what I heard.”
This interview was recorded before the UFC 278 event and Burns thought that the UFC would announce his next fight during the broadcast. He was in Salt Lake City to see the fight but no deal was made. He believes that perhaps Masvidal was waiting until after the title fight to see how it played out and assess his options from there.
