Medic on rival's prison term: 'I don't respect that'
Uros Medic speaks for the first time about the eight months Daniel Rodriguez spent in a Mexican prison. The two headline UFC's first Belgrade card on Saturday night.
Last July, Daniel Rodriguez got in a car in San Diego and drove toward Tijuana. He had marijuana on him, a decision win over Kevin Holland at UFC 318 behind him, and a border ahead of him where an American carrying drugs into Mexico stops being a fighter and becomes a defendant. He was stopped. He spent the next eight months behind bars.
He walked out of the Mexican prison in April of this year. His first booking after release is in Belgrade, on Saturday, August 1, in a five-round welterweight main event at Belgrade Arena. Standing across from him is Uros Medic, and this is the first time the Serbian has said out loud what he makes of it.
What did Medic actually say about his rival’s sentence?
He said he feels for the man, and nothing at all for what the case did to everyone else in the sport. Speaking to Mike Heck for MMA Fighting, Medic did not soften it.
“It puts a stain on all of our names. I don’t respect that.”
Asked whether he worries about ever landing in a similar spot, he drew the line somewhere else entirely.
“So I don’t buy into any of that. I don’t feed into any of that. I’m not the type of fighter that’s going to be a controversial person like that and have trouble with the law, trouble with drugs, substance abuse, or anything like that. I don’t buy into that.”
What makes the answer usable rather than merely loud is that he immediately took himself down a peg instead of climbing into a pulpit.
“I’m a professional athlete. I carry myself professionally. I study. I try to act accordingly. Obviously, I’m no saint. But you won’t see me in the news getting arrested. At least I hope so. I mean, I never try to, but you never know with that type of stuff.”
The numbers going into Saturday
Neither man is doing the other a favour here. Both arrive hot.
- Uros Medic sits at No. 14 in the official UFC welterweight rankings, 13-3, on three straight wins, all three by first-round finish
- Daniel Rodriguez is No. 13, also on a three-fight run, the last of them a decision over Holland
- Rodriguez walks in after more than a year out, because his next appointment after UFC 318 turned out to be a Mexican jail
One rankings place and one lost year separate them. Whoever wins moves into range of the welterweight top 10, and that is the neighbourhood where title talk starts.
What it means for the night itself
We have already written about Medic changing his walkout song and preparing for the first UFC event ever staged in Serbia. This interview is the other half of the same man. Picking music for a sold-out arena is one thing. Knowing that every bad headline about one MMA fighter lands on the whole roster’s tab is another.
His message for Saturday carries no sentiment at all. He wishes Rodriguez well outside the cage, and has no intention of being gentler inside it because of eight months served. He does not plan to let this one reach the judges either, and he has already written the headline he expects.
“The headlines are going to read, ‘The Doctor is in.’ Another finish for Uros Medic, and that’s all I’m chasing really.”
If it goes that way, he gets a result. If it does not, he is left with a quote, and quotes do not score.
Belgrade Arena is sold out and the main event goes on Saturday, August 1. For the Serbian it is the biggest fight of his career, at home, against a man who spent the last year nowhere near a cage. For Rodriguez it is a return to work after the most expensive wrong turn he has ever taken.
