{"id":158979,"date":"2025-09-21T14:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T14:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/158979\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T14:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T14:33:08","slug":"oliveira-rips-pathetic-lightweights-for-turning-down-ufc-rio-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/158979\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliveira rips \u2018pathetic\u2019 lightweights for turning down UFC Rio spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

News broke Friday (Sept. 19, 2025) that Rafael Fiziev was off UFC Rio with an injury, leaving main event fighter Charles Oliveira without a dance partner. The UFC has vowed to keep \u201cDo Bronx\u201d on the card,<\/a> but against who?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of movement over the past 24 hours, with plenty of lightweight contenders coming out of the woodwork offering to fill in for Fiziev. At the top of the list is No. 8 ranked Mateusz Gamrot, who is coming off a one-sided decision<\/a> win over L\u2019udovit Klein back in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ready and hungry to jump in!!\u201d Gamrot wrote on X (formerly Twitter). \u201cCome on UFC.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday he added an Instagram story showing him boarding a plane to the United States, setting off a whole lot of speculation that he was the man who got the call \u2026 but that\u2019s all conjecture.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy fight and it wouldn\u2019t be the camp I need,\u201d Moicano said on his YouTube channel. \u201cBut a fight against Charles in the main event in Brazil would be impossible to say no to.\u201d<\/p>\n

One fighter who isn\u2019t interested is No. 13 ranked Benoit Saint Denis. BSD just beat Mauricio Ruffy<\/a> in the co-main event of UFC Paris, but doesn\u2019t want to risk his two-fight win streak jumping into a Oliveira fight unprepared.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be no BSD vs. Oliveira in October,\u201d Saint Denis\u2019 manager Guillaume Peltier wrote on Instagram. \u201cWe respect Oliveira far too much to take him on like this. A fight of this magnitude must be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those hoping for No. 6 ranked Dan Hooker to step in, he\u2019s been out of consideration since the original round of matchmaking that led to Oliveira vs. Fiziev. \u201cThe Hangman\u201d won\u2019t be cleared to return<\/a> from a hand surgery until November, a month after UFC Rio.<\/p>\n

For his part, Charles Oliveira sounds ready to fight anybody put in front of him. If anything, he\u2019s upset that the best fighters are still avoiding him in Rio.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t fall for that bulls–t these guys say, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ll fight him, I\u2019ll fight him!\u2019\u201d Oliveira said on Instagram. \u201cBecause the UFC is offering, and they\u2019re all saying, \u2018There\u2019s no time to make weight,\u2019 \u2018I can\u2019t do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo forget about posting on the internet to gain hype. Forget it, because it\u2019s getting pathetic. I saw someone posting something, someone else saying something. But when the UFC calls, what do you say? \u2018I can\u2019t. I got a stomach ache, I broke my finger, I hurt my hand.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo stop this nonsense, it\u2019s pathetic,\u201d Oliveira concluded. \u201cI want to fight at UFC Rio. I asked for this fight. My opponent got injured, then about 10 others showed up saying they\u2019d accept. So far, every time the UFC calls, they say it\u2019s not possible. Pathetic. You want to be famous? Go do something else. Don\u2019t keep saying you want to fight me when that\u2019s a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News broke Friday (Sept. 19, 2025) that Rafael Fiziev was off UFC Rio with an injury, leaving main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-158979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}