White: Belfort turned down fight with Machida for interim title
Dana White: I called (Vitor Belfort’s camp) back, and they’re like, ‘Uh, yeah, we’ll wait for the Chris Weidman (fight). So there you go.”
When UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman suffered separated ribs and was out of his title defense vs. Vitor Belfort, league president Dana White made Belfort an offer. Lyoto Machida offered to step up on short notice, and fight Belfort on Feb. 29.
It’s typical Vitor, White said at the UFC 183 post-fight press conference, as transcribed by Steven Marrocco and John Morgan for MMAJunkie. Vitor is blowing me up on the phone, (saying), ‘I want an interim title fight. I haven’t fought, I want to stay on the card, I want to fight.’
So all day – obviously the day that this was happening was a rough day for me. had a lot of stuff going on that day. So it was about 8:30 at night by the time I got to it and handled it. What I did was I picked up the phone and I called Lyoto Machida. I said, ‘Here’s the deal.’ The first thing Lyoto Machida said is, ‘Send me the bout agreement.’
I called (Vitor’s camp) back, and they’re like, ‘Uh, yeah, we’ll wait for the Chris Weidman (fight). So there you go.
It’s a rib injury, so it’s one of those things. It’s like the cartilage or the whatever in between. It’s so painful, if anybody’s ever had that, coughing and sneezing and sitting up are tough chores, let alone training and fighting.
White added that he had one more option for a Belfort fight. Whether he is referring to Gegard Mousasi, who earlier offered to take the fight is not known at this point.