EXCLUSIVE | Marvin Vettori Explains Karl Roberson Hotel Altercation
Middleweight contender Marvin Vettori has had the unluckiest start to 2020 of anyone in MMA. The Italian has been the victim of two late notice fight cancellations. The first was a supposed fight against Darren Stewart at UFC London in March. Unfortunately, the entire event was scrapped just a few days out from fight night due to the ongoing global pandemic.
Vettori was instead booked to fight Karl Roberson on May 13 and that fight was called off on the day of the event. Roberson had missed weight the day prior and then fell ill afterward meaning he was unable to compete, much to the annoyance of his fight hungry opponent.
Speaking exclusively to LowKickMMA Vettori talked through his emotions after hearing his fight had been called off at extremely late notice, he said.
“I was fuming. I was pissed. Obviously, it was the day of (the fight). The day f*cking of! I’m like ok he missed weight and you’re recharging and then I woke up the day of, the day of man. That’s something I don’t even wish to my enemies something like that. Not even to my worst enemy. It’s f*cked up! You wake up, you’re ready to rumble then they f*cking tell you it’s off. What the f*ck? The day f*kcing of because the guy is that much of a pussy.”
Vettori wanted to speak with Roberson to find out why he pulled out on fight night. The Italian eventually tracked down ‘Baby K’ and got the explanation he was after – not that he liked it.
“I just said what happened? What’s going on? Because I saw him all fine, he was just walking and am like what happened? Why did you pull out? His coach started talking and he said a couple of weird stuff. He said after the weigh-in he fainted, and we called the UFC medical team straight away and they pulled him from the fight because they checked his liver values, his kidney values and they were all off. Fainting can mean anything, or it can be nothing. If you really want to fight after you faint you just check yourself a little bit and see what the f*ck happened and go from there. You don’t just call the UFC medical team right away that’s something I definitely wouldn’t do.”
The meeting between the two UFC middleweights eventually descended into chaos and video footage began circulating showing an emotional Vettori trying to physically fight Roberson. However, that was never his intention and Vettori claims he was about to walk away from the conversation before Roberson got confrontational, he said.
“Just before walking away, I said ‘you know you f*cked up right?’ And he said ‘yeah, I f*cked up’. So, after he said that I was about to walk away, I was already half turned. Then he looks at me like in a challenging way, trying to confront me and says, ‘I heard you said I’m scared to fight you’. I’m like ‘f*ck yeah I believe that for sure I do believe that. You were a broken man yesterday; you are a broken man today’. From there he just put his chest out and tried to confront me and that’s where I flipped out. That’s where I freaked out and I’m like fuck this shit! We was supposed to fight in two hours and you fucking pulled out and now you’re trying to fight me right here. Let’s fucking fight. I’m all about f*cking fighting right now because we was supposed to and you pulled out. I wanted to make him pay for it.”
Who wins when Marvin Vettori and Karl Roberson finally face off?
