Visa issues with opponent Song Yadong or not, Marlon Vera is fighting Saturday night.
China’s Yadong hit a snag in his visa process, although the belief is he has it sorted. Still, just to be safe, Team Alpha Male coach Urijah Faber weighed in Friday, to ensure Vera had an opponent no matter what.
What a whirlwind it’s been for Vera ahead of UFC on ESPN 8, which goes down in Jacksonville, Florida on Saturday night.
The fight has been scrapped before. More than once — or so Vera thought. At one point, he blew up on twitter, after hearing the fight was off (it actually wasn’t).
“I didn’t know what was going on. So went and I wrote some stuff when I was pissed. I’m sorry for what I said,” he told reporters at the event’s virtual media day this week.
“This fight was offered to me twice, that’s why I reacted the way I did when the fight was ‘cancelled’ the second time,” Vera explained. “The first time, I didn’t know why they said no, the second time, I thought it was the same reason. It is what it is. We’re here and we’re ready to fight, that’s the good thing about it.”
After all the ups and downs, Vera is feeling just a little strange. “At this point, I’m ready to fight anybody, because all the game plans changed in one week. So that was a little weird,” he noted.
On the upside, Vera discussed his weight cut heading into the UFC FL card. Or his lack of one. Normally competing at bantamweight, Vera and Yadong are throwing down at 145lbs.
“I’m happy. I’m really happy, because I really have like nothing to cut. I can work out. It’s going to be easy,” he stated. “But I’ve got to keep it real: I’m fighting a 35’er. I do believe the Chinese guy is a little bigger than me, but we’re still 35’ers. I see 45’ers around, I’m like ‘aww f*ck. I need to put some weight on if I’m going to fight this guy.'”
“That’s why we have weight classes. Those 45’ers look like 55’ers to me,” admitted Vera.
