Darian Weeks was supposed to fight last weekend at UFC Paris.
The fight did not happen. A highly anticipated match-up with kickboxer Cédric Doumbé fell through under murky circumstances, though Weeks has a general idea of what happened.
“I didn’t get a valid reason, the UFC never said anything unfortunately,” Weeks (5-2) told The Top Turtle Podcast on Cageside Press recently. “But I was hearing something on Twitter,
it might have just been that he didn’t get enough MMA fights for the French boxing commission to allow him to do the sport.”
That, said Weeks, “blew my mind because he’s decorated in GLORY kickboxing and he has over 80 some-odd fights. It kind of threw me for a loop, for them to say he didn’t have enough fights to participate. But it being the first French card, I think they were just kind of trying to cover their end and make sure nothing happened on their behalf.”
As disappointing as the fight falling through was, “maybe he’ll get more fights and we’ll see each other later on down this road. It’s on to the next one for me though.”
Weeks has had some tough outs thus far in the UFC, having gone up against Bryan Barberena and Ian Garry. He’s confident that things could have been different however. “We knew that we were able to beat Barberena and we knew that we were able to beat Ian Garry. The difference is, we just didn’t act on it. Things didn’t go our way, the feeling didn’t go our way in the ring that night. It kind of disappoints, but we’ve set those aside. We know where our athleticism stands, we know where our strengh stands, where our skill set stands. We’ll capitalize on every fight from here on out.”
Darian Weeks faces Yohan Lainesse on Saturday night at UFC 279 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
