There’s a lot of hype surrounding Bo Nickal at the moment, despite the fact that the UFC’s new recruit from the Contender Series is only 3-0 in his MMA career so far, and the decorated wrestler appears to be determined to rise to the top of the sport as soon as possible.
So much so in fact that in addition to having already called out the likes of Khamzat Chimaev and Logan Paul, he’s also now declared that he’ll retire if the UFC brass start him out in the prelims.
“Am I a prelim guy? I’m not a prelim guy. If I have to fight in the prelims, I’ll just retire. I’m done,” Nickal told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour show.
“I don’t know if it’s in the contract, (but) they’ll do the right thing, they’ll do the smart thing. Like I said, if I’m on the prelims, I’ll retire. I’m out.
“I’ve seen them do it before. I’ve seen them do, like, a bigger fight on the prelims and stuff. But I’m a main card guy. It just doesn’t make sense.
“It’s Dana White’s Contender Series again, but I’m main eventing Dana White’s Contender Series at 2-0. Every fight I’m in is the main event. They’re putting me on the main card.”
Nickal was recently booked to fight Jamie Pickett at UFC 282 in las Vegas on December 10th, so that’s a relatively high-profile show for his debut, and as such it’ll be interesting to see whether the UFC does agree to his demands to be part of the pay-per-view line-up.
At present the five-card PPV portion of the event is rumored to be headlined by a light-heavyweight title rematch between Jiri Prochazka and Glover Teixeira, while it also seems likely that Robbie Lawler vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio and Darren Till vs. Dricus du Plessis will also feature on the main card.
That leaves two spots up for grabs, with Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs. Chris Daukaus being another potential candidate to take one, in addition to any other notable match-ups the UFC may bring to the card in the coming weeks.
