Jorge Masvidal Furious At Cowboy For “Stealing His Food”

Former UFC lightweight title challenger Donald Cerrone has been on quite the tear since making the jump up in weight to 170 pounds, winning all four of his welterweight bouts via finish.

Now “Cowboy” will take on another tough test in the UFC’s welterweight division when he faces No. 12-ranked Jorge Masvidal in the co-main event of UFC on FOX 23 this Saturday night (January 28, 2017). Masvidal called out Cerrone following his first-round TKO win over Jake Ellenberger last month, and Cowboy was happy to oblige.

Masvidal recently joined the Fight Society podcast (via FOX Sports) to discuss his upcoming contest with Cerrone, claiming he’s just happy to have finally landed a top 10 opponent after many obstacles:

“It’s just a dude with a number by (his name) is what I’ve been gunning for. I’ve had so many close calls of getting top 10 dudes, both of us signing bout agreements and somehow the fight doesn’t go down,” Masvidal said. “That’s happened four times that I’ve signed a bout agreement against a top 10 dude.

“They sign the bout agreement, they put out the posters, the UFC announces the fight coming soon, gives us the date, the arena, buy the tickets online — for some reason the fight doesn’t come to fruition. It’s (expletive) nuts.”

‘Gamebred’ stated that Cerrone has taken ‘food from my plate’ on two different instances, as fighters who were scheduled to throw down with him were pulled to fight Cowboy instead at a different time. One most recent example of this came after Matt Brown was originally scheduled to meet Masvidal but ‘Immortal’ was then moved to the UFC 206 pay-per-view (PPV) co-main event against Cowboy, something that has obviously gotten Masvial fired up for this weekend:

“I feel like I’m going to break his face. I’m telling you I have a lot of ill will towards him for different reasons,” Masvidal explained. “He’s taken literally food from my plate on two different occasions of those fights that got pulled from me. They pulled fighters from me who were already signed and ready to fight me and I was ready to fight them and they give it to him.

“I know it’s not him intentionally doing that but somebody’s got to pay. That somebody’s name is “Cowboy”. He’s got to pay with interest.”

Given that the fight will take place in Cerrone’s backyard of Denver, Colorado, Masvidal said he knows he needs to finish the fight as he doesn’t want to go to the judges’ scorecards in enemy territory:

“I’m not going to out-point this dude. I know I’m not going to win a decision in Denver, this (expletive) white dude from Denver. It’s not going to happen,” Masvidal said. “I don’t win decisions in Florida. It’s not going to happen, I’m going to beat this guy in his own home state.

“So I’m going to go in there and execute him so he doesn’t have to worry about the split decisions on this one, I promise you.”

When they share the Octagon this weekend, Masvidal believes his adversary will be searching for a way out once the contest gets difficult, something he claims Cerrone frequently does but he has never done in his fighting career:

“I don’t see him at any point having the lead in the fight. I just see him like he’s done in the past saying ‘you know what maybe it’s not my day today and look for a way out’,” Masvidal said. “You can look at all my losses, don’t go to my wins, just go to my losses and look at my eyes and see if I’ve ever found a way out of a fight. If I ever even thought to tap or let me not engage and just be real defensive and try to survive. That’s never happened in my career.

“You can see in his fights where it’s happened multiple times. So that’s how I feel.”

Come fight night, Masvidal will finally get the opportunity to unleash all his pent-up anger towards Cowboy, and he closed by saying he plans to send his opponent to the hospital in a helicopter:

“To tell you the truth, I wish the fight was right now. I just want to break this guy’s (expletive) face,” Masvidal said. “This is not a sparring match. You’re not going to see me touching gloves.

“You’re going to see me getting after it and either I’ll be leaving to the hospital in an ambulance or he’ll be leaving to the ambulance in a helicopter because it’s going to be a (expletive) fight. I’m coming to fight and I’m coming to break his (expletive) face.”