VD Dana White berättar hur UFC resonerat kring beslutet att släppa Jake Shields från organisationen.
HETAST JUST NU
Under gårdagen kom nyheten att UFC valt att släppa Jake Shields (29-7-1, 1 NC) från organisationen. Då Shields är en högt rankad welterviktare som segrat i två av sina tre senaste framträdanden, sammanlagt 4-3-1 i UFC, var det många som ställde sig frågande till UFC:s beslut.
VD Dana White förklarar hur resonemanget gått inför det fattade beslutet.
– We look at everything. Everything. Money has something to do with it. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. But, that wasn’t the only reason or the main reason. It was a part of the piece of the puzzle as we were doing our evaluation of him. Mixed martial arts is a young man’s game, säger White till Yahoo! Sports.
– I like Jake Shields a lot. But let’s be honest here: Where was he going in this [welterweight] division of animals we have? He’s on the downswing, and he’s never going to be the guy. His stand-up never improved. He hasn’t really shown anything in his last couple of fights to make you go, ’Holy [expletive].’ Right now, at this point, he’s just another guy. All of the people who had been [expletive] and moaning to me about Jon Fitch when he was fighting for us and were complaining that he was so boring, they all got outraged when we cut him. And it’s like the same thing now with Jake. Well, the media didn’t even think he was good enough to be in the Top 10.
– We have 500 guys under contract, which is a lot more than we really need, and after each show, we really, really need to take a close look at what we do with guys.
Håller ni med om att Shields ”bara är ännu en fighter”?