It wasn’t long after their April meeting had been scrapped that Joe Lauzon had a new date for his fight with Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.
“Right away, they were talking about this date. I didn’t know if it was going to work; Cowboy had a movie thing he was doing in Thailand, and stuff like that,” Lauzon (28-15) recalled during this week’s UFC Austin media day. “I thought it wasn’t going to work, but he said he’d make it work, and he made it work.”
As is well-known by now, Cerrone pulled out of the fight last minute due to a bout of food poisoning, which may or may not have been the result of some iffy street tacos. Within days, Cerrone himself had called Lauzon to offer the June 18th date, despite a potential scheduling conflict.
“I owe you the fight, I got you, I’ll be there,” Lauzon remembers Cerrone saying. “And then he went and did the movie anyway.”
Movie or not, Cerrone is in Austin and hopefully avoiding any questionable foodstuffs. In the meantime, Lauzon revealed that he had an inkling all along that their April 30 date wouldn’t hold.
“All week, going back like a month before, two months before maybe, I kept telling everyone I had a feeling the fight was not going to happen,” said Lauzon. “I don’t know why, I didn’t know if it was going to be COVID-related, didn’t know why, just, ‘I feel like it’s not going to happen.’ I know if he’s got a broken leg, he will show up and he will try to fight, but I just had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen.”
That feeling was still dogging Lauzon at the ceremonial weigh-ins back in April. “I’ve never been paranoid like that ever before, I’ve never had a feeling like this before, I’ve never really dealt with that before. But I felt like the fight wasn’t going to happen.”
His immediate reaction? Lauzon admits to crying, and thinking “This is not how I want to be. This is not how I want this to go.”
At least this time around, he doesn’t have a bad feeling heading into the fight. “I don’t. I think it’s going to happen this time. We’ll see. We’re not there yet.”
Watch the full UFC Austin media day appearance by Joe Lauzon above. The event takes place this Saturday, June 18 at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.
