UFC middleweight Joe Pyfer’s wait to get into a fight with Kelvin Gastelum has been a long one, but it finally goes down (hopefully) at UFC 316 on Saturday night.
Pyfer (13-3) and Gastelum were supposed to fight at UFC Mexico City in March. Pyfer suffered an illness that canceled the bout and it was rebooked for UFC 316.
“It was back-to-back camps to it definitely feels long,” Pyfer told reporters including Cageside Press on Wednesday.
“Ultimately this is my job. The only bad part about this, because otherwise I would be in the gym trying to get better anyways, is just that I got to weight cut back-to-back. I think I’m on top of it very well. I’m excited to step in there Saturday.”
Online and elsewhere Pyfer received plenty of backlash after comments he made about Mexico following the fight cancelation. He went onto call the country a “sh*thole” after he ate food following weigh-ins that he claims is the reason he fell ill and couldn’t fight.
On Wednesday he didn’t back off his comments, but he tried to clear them up a bit.
“F*ck em,” Pyfer said before the question was even fully asked.
“They can still suck my d*ck, honestly. That’s how I feel. It was not a race statement which everybody tried to turn it into. Like I don’t like Mexicans and all this sh*t.”
He went into detail on what went wrong in Mexico. Clearly still upset about it as well.
“I don’t like their food. I don’t like their f*cking country. That’s how I feel. I don’t think as a professional athlete fighting somewhere with that kind of elevation and that kind of air quality and the risk,” he said.
“Let alone just the food. 14 out of the 15 meals I cooked. I didn’t cook on the last day and I got super sick and I was sick for weeks. Yeah I got a lot of hate. I’m sitting there borderline crying, upset, and gutted that I didn’t get to perform. All the sudden I get hit with this vicious sh*t, vomit, throw up.”
After the comments he made Pyfer says he received a lot of hate from fans. In fact some of the messages he claims he received, while expected from fight fans, are still in really poor taste.
“It was disheartening to see people be like, ‘oh we hope the cartel kills you. We hope your plane crashes. Oh you’re a p*ssy, we hope you die from whatever’. So it’s like ‘alright, suck my d*ck,’ that’s how I felt,” said Pyfer.
“That’s why I said Mexico is a sh*thole and I’ll never go back. I won’t fight there. The people were nice, I have no problem with the people, it’s just fighting there as a professional athlete makes no f*cking sense to me.”
Watch the entire media day scrum with Joe Pyfer above. He takes on Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 316 on Saturday night.
