MMA is something of a wild sport, but even with all its craziness, Marvin Vettori has been on a wild ride of late.
The Italian middleweight watched his home country hit hard by the coronavirus. Had a fight at UFC London cancelled when the entire card fell through. Was paired up with Karl Roberson in April, only to have that moved to May’s UFC Jacksonville. Then Roberson missed weight for the bout, and was pulled entirely due to health complications.
Vettori (14-4-1) would end up confronting his opponent afterwards, which led to little more than a shouting match at the time. Then, after weighing in days later as a replacement fighter at UFC Florida, Vettori found himself booked against Roberson again — in the co-main event at this weekend’s UFC on ESPN 10.
At least it’s an upgrade. Speaking to Cageside Press at Thursday’s virtual media day ahead of the fight, Vettori admitted that he was a little concerned about taking the fight with Roberson again.
“I did have some concern in the beginning because I’m like, he didn’t make weight. He was claiming to be so unwell the month ago and didn’t make weight with all the time that he had,” said Vettori. “I’m like, what is he going to change in a month? But we made it this far. Now he better step into the cage Saturday. He’s here. I f*cking hope the guy’s gonna show up.”
Asked if there was still anger on his part over Roberson missing weight and pulling out last time, Vettori told us that “I’m gonna make him pay, that’s all it is. I’m gonna make him pay. I take the fact that he messed with my life, with my coaches’ life, with my team’s life for months of life kind of personal. But at the end of the day, the worst thing I can do to him is beat him in a dominant fashion, and finish him. So that’s what I will do.”
The co-main event slot is an added bonus. “It feels great. More eyes on me,” Vettori said. “Hell yeah. We just build it up more and more. Let’s go.”
“It was all me,” Vettori said when asked about the idea of weighing in as a replacement for UFC Florida. The UFC told him he needed to weigh in, and pick a weight class. He went with 205lbs, knowing there was a couple of middleweight fights on the card. “If anything falls off over there, and they still want to fight, I could be a replacement, if they re-weigh in at 205 which is not hard for them. That’s why I did it. Or if by a miracle some 205’er wanted to step in, let’s do it. But I knew there wasn’t that many chances. It was all me, I wanted to do it. Since I’m here, I’m going to try everything to fight.”
In the end, he didn’t compete. Then again, had he fought as a replacement, he might not be in the spotlight now. Sometimes things just work out the way fate intended.
While Vettori prepared for his fights, first in March, then again in April and May, his home country of Italy was being ravaged by the coronavirus. While things have now improved, “it was hard,” he admitted to Cageside Press. “I was reading the news every day.” On a personal level, while Vettori’s family resides there, “nobody in my close family got affected by it.” Still, he said, “it wasn’t easy.”
“Now they wiped it out. They killed the economy but they they wiped it out. They’re in a better situation than here [in the U.S.] actually,” Vettori added, “in terms of how many people are infected and how many deaths are going on. My region, it’s been over a week now that there hasn’t been any new contagious person.”
UFC on ESPN 10 takes place this Saturday, June 13 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, NV. The card airs live on ESPN and ESPN+ (TSN in Canada).
