A minor injury forced Charles Oliveira to call off his fight with Beneil Dariush at UFC 288 on May 6th, but it seems that the fight may now take place at UFC 289 a month later on June 10th.
That’s the word according to Dariush, who has admitted that he was initially left very frustrated with the situation when Oliveira pulled out of their originally schesduled fight.
“I was actually pretty upset at that time,” Dariush told ‘The Schmo’. “I took a minute and kind of calmed down. So I go in and I basically say to them, ‘Hey, if that’s the case, if he’s not available, let me fight Makhachev in, let’s say, July or August?’ But they’re like, ‘No, we have to save Makhachev for October for the Abu Dhabi card.’ I don’t really wanna wait until October, but I still wanna fight for the belt. So I say, ‘OK, why don’t I get him in October then?’
“Basically, the way they put it is like – I’m not the No. 1 contender is the way they put it. They said there’s people ahead of me, and they specifically pointed out Dustin Poirier. At that point, I was about to flip a table. I was about to take Justin Gaethje’s advice. You know he said, ‘If Dariush doesn’t get the title shot, we riot.’ I was very close to that.”
However, the good news for Dariush is that the UFC were eager to still go ahead with his fight against Oliveira, and have even sweetened the deal to ensure he’s happy with it being postponed until UFC 289.
“They said they want to push the fight to June 10,” Dariush said. “I still don’t have a contract, so I’m not sure if it’s for sure, but that’s what they told me they want to do, June 10. At first, I wasn’t about it because what if this guy pulls out? But then I said a couple of things: If this guy pulls out again, I want the title shot. And basically a pay bump, too. They agreed to both things, and that was pretty much it.
“They agreed to those two things, so if he pulls out, I do get the title shot. That’s what I was told. It’s hard to say no to that, because it seems to me the UFC, on their part, is doing everything to make this fight happen. So I said yeah, let’s do it, let’s do June 10. I agreed to June 10, and I got some kind of insurance just in case he pulls out.”
