Urijah Faber and Frank Trigg hope to keep fighting for Zuffa
Published by Zach Arnold on October 3rd, 2009 in Current Events

 Print |  Email |  RSS

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about a lot of free agents and fighters contracted to UFC, it’s that there always seems to be a new dispute arising every day and yet UFC always seems to re-sign the fighters they want to keep. Dan Henderson is a free agent and there’s hardly any talk of him going to Strikeforce. Tito Ortiz talked a good game about going to Strikeforce and ended up signing a new deal with UFC.

The latest fighter to make negative comments about UFC management is Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who announced his ‘retirement’ from fighting. Dana White was recently asked about this topic by the folks at U l t m m a . c o m and gave this response.

“Here the thing. One thing I’m guaranteed every day when I get out of bed in the morning, bad shit’s going to happen. OK? It happens to me every day, it’s the business, it’s the way that it is, guys freak out, guys lose their mind, guys get hurt, you know, this stuff happens. I’m in the fight business, my job is to put on great fights that people want to buy on PPV. When they fall apart, I got to fix it, you know? Rampage, I care about Rampage, he’s a friend of mine. We’re mad at each other, we’ll figure it out, we’ll get this thing sorted out.”

While UFC and Rampage attempt to mend fences, the company is also looking to lock up WEC ace Urijah Faber to a new deal. Faber recently made comments to Dave Farra of r a w v e g a s . t v about how his hand is healing up and when he will fight next.

“They’re doing great, you know I have two steel plates in here. I feel stronger than ever, I’ve been doing every pro-active to make this thing happen and it’s looking like I’m going to be back in January, that’s just about to be inked and I’m excited about that, man, I’m really excited to get back in there, I can’t wait to fight!”

For the last couple of months, Faber has been talking about perhaps fighting elsewhere. However, the door on Strikeforce seems closed now.

“You know, we’re coming down to days now, you know, it’s been a long process and you know when it comes down to it, I love the Zuffa family and I’m hoping that everything works out and it’s looking like it’s going to. You know, in the long run, you know I’m part of the family and I think that when it’s all said and done I’ll be a very successful and happy person and that’s the most important thing to me. Let’s ink the deal first and then we’ll talk about it more.”

A critical component for Faber re-inking with Zuffa is whether or not WEC stays alive or if the entity merges with UFC. According to Faber, WEC will likely stay alive in 2010 on both Versus and PPV.

“I think it’s coming up pretty quick, I feel like there’s still a huge demand, I just got done with a huge tour, I was in Oklahoma and then in Dallas and got to feel the love from the crowd and I know there’s demand out there, people love to watch me fight and I have confidence in that, so you won’t be disappointed folks, tune in and watch my fights, you’re going to love it. I want to fight everybody, I want to get the belt back.”

Faber understands that he will need to fight multiple fighters in the 145-pound division before he can earn a title shot against Mike Brown and get the trilogy match that fans still are very interested in seeing.

“Yeah, I really did man, you know I went to a place the hardest thing was for me the second round because I was dealing with a handicap that I’ve never dealt with before but once I got past that second round, you know, I just had to push through it and I really put my heart and my soul into that fight and I’m glad that people appreciated it, I wasn’t doing it for that necessarily but I go into there to fight and I’ll fight to the death.”

How confident is Faber in being able to beat Brown?

“100% I believe that, you know, there’s no doubt in my mind that I can beat Mike Brown and that I have the tools to do it, just got to make it happen.”

While Faber will likely sign a new deal with Zuffa, one fighter who is looking to stay with Zuffa and not get cut is Frank Trigg. After he lost to Josh Koscheck at UFC 103 in Dallas on September 19th, rumors swirled around that UFC would be letting Trigg go for good. Trigg says that he has at least one more fight left with the company. Trigg told Dave Farra of Raw Vegas TV that everything was blown out of proportion in the media.

“It’s the weird thing, man, the media is a strange junket, you know, as a commentator I kind of know the media, you know, runs with some scam. What I think happened, now mind you I’m talking out of context, I wasn’t there when it happened, but I understand is that John Morgan from MMA Junkie had asked Dana White what’s going to happen with a bunch of guys that had lost and he named off like three or four guys, Mirko Cro Cop being one of them, and Dana was like I think they’re done, you know, I think they have to get done and because he was on that formula he was like well what about and he started naming names, it’s like he’s done, he’s done, he’s done. Later on when Dana was asked about it, he’s like dude I don’t know I mean c’mon man, you’re talking to a guy who has to answer 75 questions a night, every night, and then on UFC night maybe 150 questions? He can’t remember every single answer he gave out, so what happened is that later on there was no intention of releasing me, getting rid of me, they knew that if I lost to Josh Koscheck that I was going to have to have another pretty tough fight to prove my worth, I mean let’s face facts the UFC is doing me a favor, I’m not doing any favors by coming in, they’re doing me a favor and we have to find out now that the next fight hopefully it’ll be here in Vegas, I want to be on the November card that’s here in Vegas, I don’t think it’s going to happen, I want to be on the January card that’s here in Vegas, January 2nd, but I don’t think that’s going to happen either so we’ll see what happens. I want to fight here in Vegas if they’re going to have me if any fight I want to fight here in my hometown. If not, then just send me so far away it makes no difference so send me to like an Australia or a Germany or a Manchester, just send me so far out of it that it doesn’t make any difference, I have no fans, you know, either put me where all my fans are or put me all the way out of it and that’s the next step. As far as I know, now mind you this is me speaking, I have no idea really what they were thinking in their own head. As far as I know, there was no intents of ever releasing me and they never thought of releasing me, it was just I lost the fight, it was time for to get ready for the next fight and that’s it.”