WSoF 20 avgörs till helgen och från början var det tänkt att Melvin ”The Young Assassin” Guillard skulle möta Ozzy Dugulubgov i galans Co-Main event men efter flera uttalanden och missade läkarundersökningar från Guillards sida valde organisationen att ta bort honom från kortet. När WSoF:s president Ray Sefo under gårdagen besvarade frågor inför fredagen handlade naturligt mycket om Guillards framtid med organisationen.
Melvin ”The Young Assassin” Guillard (32-14-2-2) har haft en kaotisk period i sin nya organisation WSoF . Han har missat vikten till båda sina fighter, varav den ena var tänkt för lättviktsbältet mot Justin Gaethje . Efter att han uttalat kritik mot WSoF och inte varit kontaktbar inför hans fight till helgen vid WSoF 20 så är han nu struken från kortet. Organisationens president Ray Sefo berättar nu om varför det valde detta: ”Like I told his managers, from day one, his first fight with us he missed weight and he came up with some sort of excuse. Listen, I’m the guy that fights for the fighters all the time, but when a fighter’s unprofessional and doesn’t live up to the obligations of his contract, I want to be the first one to step up and say something”.
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Sefo säger att alla dessa beteenden tillsammas tvingat honom till att reagera och att en borttagning från kortet var den enda lösningen. ”Guillard missed weight for his first fight. He missed weight for a world title fight. He put us at risk in terms of…because, what happens if he’d won that fight? And then our PR team has reached out to him and his management team to do PR. He just completely ignored that, and then he goes off and does his own interview with somebody else and trash talks the company. It’s just, you know, I’m not going to tolerate that kind of behavior”. Guillard är dessutom 3-6-1 i sina senaste 10 matcher så trots sitt stora namn har han inte råd att undvika de engagemang som alla fighters behöver genomgå.
”Oklart om han slåss för oss igen”
Ray Sefo går även in på detaljerna kring Guillards missade läkarundersökning. ”He was given a deadline, which was going to be last Friday for his medicals, and that didn’t happen. Then Ali (Abdel-Aziz) sent out an email saying that if he didn’t have his medicals by 10 o’clock Monday morning, then he was going to be pulled from the card. At 10 or 11 — 11:30 or 12 — we still hadn’t heard anything from his management team, nor had we heard anything from him, so we sent out an email stating all of the things I just said. And that left me no choice but to pull him from the card.
Funny enough, five or ten minutes later, we get a phone call from his team, but we don’t hear from Melvin. So, you know, it’s just one of these things. If you want to be a professional fighter, then be professional. You’re getting paid good money to fight, and we signed you to a contract. It’s just unprofessional. I’ve been in this game a long time. I’ve had 101 fights and there’s not one time that I was not professional about any fight, even when I was an amateur. Again, I’m not going to tolerate anybody who’s not going to be professional, when we are trying everything that we can to help you”. På frågan om han ser någon framtid för UFC-veteranen i WSoF får vi inga klara besked: ”Right now that’s something we’re going to discuss. Like I told his management team, that’s something we’re going to discuss next week when this is over. And then we’ll see where we go from there”.
Foto: Per Häljestam
