VANCOUVER, British Columbia – As the man who introduced the phrase “BMF” into the mixed martial arts lexicon, you could excuse Donald Cerrone if he chose to be salty about the fact he won’t be fighting that particular belt.
Cerrone is the owner of the BMF Ranch in New Mexico, but it’s Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal who will fight for the BMF title in the main vent of UFC 244.
If you expect the “Cowboy” to hate on the idea, though, you must not have been following his career very long.
“That’s cool though, good for them,” Cerrone told reporters, including MMA Junkie, at Wednesday’s UFC on ESPN+ 16 open workouts. “I don’t have any hate or anything silly toward them, good for them.”
Besides, there’s an undisputed pair of BMFs heading into the Octagon for UFC on ESPN+ 16’s lightweight main event in Gaethje (20-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) and Cerrone (38-12 MMA, 23-9 UFC), two of the most crowd-pleasing fighters in the game.
And they’ve already thrown down before. Gaethje, in the buildup to the fight, pointed out that Cerrone once knocked him out in sparring. Cerrone, while surprised Gaethje mentioned it, confirmed it happened.
“I would have never brought that up on my end, you know?” Cerrone said. “So I don’t know why he did. But training is totally different than fighting, and it must have been a weird, lucky shot. That was so many years and he’s a totally different guy and its gonna be the fight everyone thinks it’s going to be.”
If Cerrone can repeat their gym war result out in Vancouver, he believes he should be next in line for a shot at Khabib Nurmagomedov’s lightweight title. But he also doesn’t want to sit around, so “Cowboy” said he’d be willing to take a welterweight fight in the interim.
“After I beat Gaethje, there’s nobody else (except Nurmagomedov),” Cerrone said. “That’s it, there is no one in front of me. I do want to fight in December though. I’ll have to take a little 155 break go to 170, we’ll see.”
And if that doesn’t pan out, hey, maybe he could get the first shot at the winner of the BMF belt. But you’d have to get past the fact Cerrone already lost to both.
“There we go,” Cerrone said with a chuckle. “Both of them whooped my ass already so that would be kind of hard.”
