Medic before Belgrade: “I am changing my walkout song”
Uros Medic says he booked the Belgrade main event himself, by walking up to Daniel Rodriguez at a UFC show and asking whether he had a fight. He is also switching his walkout music.
No manager, no back and forth through matchmakers, no waiting on an email. Uros Medic walked up to Daniel Rodriguez in a crowd at a UFC show, asked him whether he had a fight booked, and offered him Belgrade on the spot. The people standing around them, he says, just stared.
That is how the main event of the August 1 card at Belgrade Arena came together. Medic laid out the story for the first time in an interview published at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, two days out from the show.
“Yes, there were a lot of people there. I ran into him and I did not have many opponents in mind, so I went straight up to him and asked him respectfully whether he had a fight booked. I had seen that he called out Edwards, because I had asked for that fight too. And he goes, ‘No, I have not heard anything.’ I offered him August, come to Belgrade, you could be the main event. He liked it, and everyone around us was just staring. I did not mean anything bad by it. A fight is a fight. He got the contract before me, I signed as well, and here we are.”
The detail worth holding on to is that Rodriguez signed the paperwork before the man who invited him. Both fighters had chased Leon Edwards, both missed out, and they ended up with each other.
Why is Medic in the headline slot?
Because he knocked out Jeff Neal in February, which is the reason he gives himself. The rankings back him up: Medic sits 14th at welterweight, Rodriguez 15th, so this is two neighbours on the ladder rather than a courtesy booking for the host country.
The numbers around him are as unusual as the way he landed the fight:
- a 13-3 record, with all thirteen wins finished inside the distance
- eleven of those came by knockout
- Rodriguez is 20-5 and 39 years old, Medic is 33
Which produces a fact that is easy to skip past. Medic has never handed a single victory over to the judges. Now he has five rounds booked for the first time, 25 minutes, on a card we covered earlier when he came home after nine years away. The fighter who never needed the clock now has all the clock the UFC gives out.
The arithmetic clearly does not weigh on him.
“When I step into the octagon, I am the main character. I try to give everything I have and put on the best performance possible. I love this sport, I love these fans. The only thing that is different is that I am fighting later in the night, everything else stays the same. It does not really matter how awkward he is. Once the cage door closes he can be as awkward as he likes, we will see who is better, who is faster and who is stronger.”
Asked about the five-round distance, he answered in one line: “We don’t get paid by the hour, we get paid by the job.”
New music, and Serbian first
The first thing the arena will notice is not tactics but sound. Medic is changing the song he walks out to and will not say what he picked.
“I am changing the song. I will not reveal which one it is. We will save that for the fight.”
Afterwards, he said, he will speak to the crowd in Serbian first and only then in English. For a fighter who built the last nine years of his career in the United States, that is more than protocol.
He left Serbia in 2015, at a point when domestic MMA barely registered.
“It is great, I am glad to be home again. I still do not fully feel like I am home, because I have a lot of work to do on Saturday. I will enjoy it once the job is done. You could say this is the biggest challenge of my career. I am very glad we are here, but there is pressure. When I moved away from Serbia, the MMA scene was nowhere in my sights. I did kickboxing until I went to the United States and saw that everyone over there trains MMA. It turned 180 degrees. When I left in 2015 I did not know much, I was not following it, other than the UFC being popular because of the Conor era. He was mainstream, and in the future this will be the biggest sport in the world. If every country has one champion, the whole country will get behind him and cheer. We have brought the UFC here, the next step is having a champion.”
What Rodriguez brings into the cage
Medic does not talk down about him, but he does not call him a clean fighter either.
“I look to fight smart. Even when I am aggressive. You cannot say that for him. He makes the fight dirty and anything can happen. That is very dangerous for any fighter and you have to be careful. It is no joke. The biggest challenge of my career is waiting for me.”
The American kept it short at the Belgrade Arena media day. “This is definitely a dream come true, being on the poster and being the main event,” Rodriguez said. Medic, sitting in front of a backdrop reading Medic vs Rodriguez, offered his own line: “My heart is full, I am glad to be here.”
Start times
Prelims begin at 10 a.m. Eastern, the main card at 1 p.m. Eastern, which is 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. in Belgrade. The main event goes last, as always.
This fight did not come out of rankings math. It came out of one question asked face to face, which is rare in a sport where dates are usually settled by email. Beat Rodriguez, and Medic will not have to go asking for the next one.
