When news of Rory MacDonald having to drop out of his fight with BJ Penn at UFC 152 due to a serious cut to his forehead it appeared both fighters had a desire to keep the bout alive by postponing it until a later date, but the details of when and where it should now happen has become something of a contentious issue.
Late on Saturday night Penn indicated that he would be willing to push it back until UFC 153 in Rio three weeks later, but MacDonald indicated that he would prefer to have it at UFC 154 in Montreal, two months after they were originally supposed to lock horns.
So fat the UFC hasn’t confirmed which date they are aiming for, but yesterday Penn made it clear that he’s not in favor of MacDonald’s proposal.
“@Rory_MacDonald , with all due respect you challenged me to come out of retirement and I accepted. Then, you back out of the fight!” Penn wrote on Twitter.
“Now you want to put our fight off for two-more-months, but this fight should happen as soon as the cut heals. 10-weeks from now is plenty of time. Let’s fight on Oct. 13th, that’s more than reasonable.”
Penn has also requested that MacDonald agree to continue to honor their earlier agreement to have on-going pre-fight drug tests implemented by the Volunatary Anti-Doping Agency up until the date of the fight, whenever that might be.
MacDonald hasn’t responded yet, but he’ll be appearing on Ariel Helwani’s ‘The MMA Hour’ shoe today so we should find out his take on the situation then.
Personally I’m still sticking to my original hunch that the UFC will favor the UFC 154 date since UFC 153 in Rio already has a stacked card lined up, but having said that I do think Penn has a point that pushing the fight back two months is a little excessive.
Either way the fact that the bad blood between these two seems to be growing by the day is adding to the intrigue surrounding their fight and can only be a good thing for the UFC regardless of which card it does eventually end up on.
