Uros Medic sets a deadline: UFC belt in Serbia next year
From the cage in Belgrade Arena, Uros Medic named Leon Edwards and Carlos Prates as the fights he wants, and gave himself twelve months to go after the welterweight title.
He was still in his gloves, sitting up on the cage fence, his name lit up on the LED board behind him. Belgrade Arena had not sat back down. Uros Medic took the microphone, opened by saying there was not enough time for everything he wanted to say, and then in under a minute said the two things people are still talking about a day later.
One was a name. The other was a deadline.
“I have so many words, I don’t think we have enough time tonight. With that being said, I’m gonna cook the rest of this division. With you guys by my side, we’re going to bring the belt to Serbia!”
He closed the main event of the first UFC card ever held in Serbia in the first round, at 30 seconds, by TKO against American Daniel Rodriguez. That is the occasion. The story is what he said once the microphone reached him, and what he repeated later at the post-fight press conference.
Who does Medic want next?
Two men. Leon Edwards, the former welterweight champion currently ranked eighth, and Carlos Prates, who Medic himself pointed out sits above him in the division. Edwards came up twice in the same night, once inside the cage and once in the press room.
“Leon Edwards is next. If he’s available. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll fight someone else, no problem.”
He also went back to a line he has used in the build-up: “I was calling out Leon Edwards, he’s still hiding.” The callout is not new. What is new is that it now comes from a fighter who has ended four fights in a row before the final bell.
Where Medic stands in the welterweight rankings
Going into the fight he sat at the very bottom of the top 15, listed either 14th or 15th depending on which set of rankings you read. Rodriguez was directly ahead of him, 13th or 14th by the same measure. Edwards is eighth.
That gap is why the fight Medic is asking for would not be a routine next step but a jump of several places at once:
- a fourth straight win, with the previous three also finished by first-round knockout
- his 14th professional win
- his first outing as a main-event headliner in front of a home crowd
Rodriguez came into the cage off a long layoff. Before the return he spent eight months in a Mexican prison, which left his form an open question going in.
The clock he started himself
Asked whether a 30-second knockout could have gone any better, he gave an answer that does not leave much room for reading between the lines.
“Yes, it can be better, if I had brought the belt back. Next year we’ll bring the belt home.”
That sets a twelve-month clock. In a welterweight division where ranked fighters routinely wait months for a date, it means two serious fights inside a year, and it assumes neither one leaves him injured.
Vidovdan, and nine years away
Before the card we wrote that Medic had promised to change his walkout song. He changed it. He came out to Vidovdan, in the version recorded by Dejan Petrovic and his brass band.
“Vidovdan is our second anthem.”
He left Serbia nine years ago as a 22-year-old student. He came back as the man closing the first UFC show in the country. On the camp itself he was short and unsentimental.
“I have to watch it back to see what the fight was like. I was focused, I tried to stay focused. That’s how I lived the whole time, I didn’t see my family, I didn’t go home.”
His first words from the octagon were for the room: “Good evening Belgrade, good evening Serbia! Thank you! These were two tough weeks.” He now plans a few weeks with his family, the first since camp opened.
What comes next is a date, not a quote. Until the UFC puts an opponent and a card next to his name, everything said in the arena is still a request. If the Edwards fight gets made, one night could carry Medic into the top five. If it does not, someone from his own end of the rankings gets the call, and the twelve-month math he wrote for himself gets a good deal harder.
