‘Disheartened’ Rothwell reacts to ‘absurd’ booking
Ben Rothwell: “I felt a lot of good vibes, a lot of traction. UFC on FOX posted about my calls for Andrei, The Underground was on it, Twitter was blowing up.”
UFC heavyweight Ben Rothwell campaigned for a fight with Andrei Arlovski. Instead, Rothwell was matched with Stipe Miocic at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 76. However, Miocic pulled out of the fight with an injury, just 11 days before.
Rothwell naturally wanted to fight Arlovksi even more. But instead the injury had insult added to it, and Miocic got a shot at Arlovski in the co-main of UFC 195 on Jan 2 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Rothwell was not impressed.
“It’s hard to be excited, I’m disheartened,” said Rothwell to MMAjunkie, as transcribed by Adam Guillen Jr. for MMA Mania. “I’ve been rallying for a fight with Andrei while in Ireland, for a whole week. I felt a lot of good vibes, a lot of traction. UFC on FOX posted about my calls for Andrei, The Underground was on it, Twitter was blowing up. I just felt people wanted to see the fight. Two weeks ago, Stipe pulled out of the fight.
“Here I am in Ireland, I’m here to fight and ready to go. Somehow, the guy that’s injured, that I was supposed to fight now gets to fight the guy I’ve been asking for. It makes no sense whatsoever. I’m not going to talk about what’s fair because there is nothing fair in this sport, so let’s get past that. I just, fair or not, I’m just completely blindsided. I mean if Andrei got matched up with somebody else, fine, whatever. But to get matched up with the guy I’m supposed to fight that’s not here to fight; the fight is Saturday and this is all getting announced, the fight hasn’t happened. It’s absurd.
“I said, ‘Why is his guy (Stipe) getting rewarded?’ And they’re like, ‘It’s not a reward, he’s ranked third, Andrei’s ranked fourth. We’re just putting it together because of rankings.’ It doesn’t make sense. I mean Overeem is ranked behind me and he’s fighting the No. 1 contender in Junior Dos Santos. I mean, we are all in the top 10, let us fight each other.
“I’m the guy that’s been calling out Andrei, isn’t that worth anything? They’ve been telling us for years that fighters need to call out guys. I’ve been calling out the top dudes for the last year now and not one of the fights I’ve been asking for has been (made). So, I don’t get it it, it’s obvious frustration. You just try to hold on to, ‘Man, is something going to happen?’ I just don’t see it now.
“The only thing that I can see is that by literally an act of God, or Overeem gets hurt and I get to fight Junior. Cool, then all of this makes sense, I’ll be happy and I get the fight that I want. I don’t think it’s going to happen, Overeem is professional and he shows up to his fights.”
Hopefully the UFC will line up something awesome for Rothwell. In the mean time, he will be waiting around just in case something happens to Overween or JDS ahead of their fight at UFC on FOX 17 on December 19.