UFC middleweight star Bo Nickal\u2019s recent withdrawal from Real American Freestyle 5 has one legendary combatant extremely concerned.<\/p>\n
Bo Nickal has had an eventful last year in combat sports.<\/p>\n
Nickal, a blue-chip middleweight MMA prospect and Dana White\u2019s Contender Series alum, is also considered one of the greatest collegiate wrestlers in NCAA history. He was scheduled to wrestle with former UFC title challenger Yoel Romero at Real American Freestyle 5 before Romero missed weight, and Nickal refused to book a catchweight bout.<\/p>\n
Nickal\u2019s decision came after a head-kick knockout at UFC 322 in November, a bounce-back performance after a knockout loss to Reinier de Ridder last year at UFC Des Moines. After withdrawing from the wrestling match against Romero, many fight fans scolded<\/a> Nickal on social media.<\/p>\n One legendary former UFC standout believes Nickal\u2019s withdrawal from RAF might be the symptom of a larger issue.<\/p>\n Kenny Florian \u2018concerned\u2019 with Bo Nickal after RAF 5 withdrawal<\/p>\n In a recent interview with Submission Radio<\/a>, UFC legend Kenny Florian shared an interesting take on Nickal\u2019s rocky recent combat sports chapter.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough because I\u2019m not quite sure what the perspective is from Nickal and why he decided not to,\u201d Florian said of Nickal. \u201cIs he competing because he\u2019s trying to get better as a martial artist, a fighter, a wrestler, whatever it is, and kind of doing it for fun? Is he doing it because he\u2019s trying to notch yet another win and help the perception of him as an athlete, as a competitor, and perhaps he was concerned that if he did lose, especially against a guy in Yoel Romero who is an elite, elite wrestler, did he feel that he was going to hurt his brand even more?<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a little bit of a concern because, again, this is not a mixed martial arts fight that\u2019s going to go down on his record and I still think if he lost, people would not see it so negatively. I think that when [Nickal] lost [to Reinier de Ridder] that kind of was a big blow to his ego and his momentum as well. I don\u2019t know, maybe that was on the back of his mind. He didn\u2019t want to deal with the criticism.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going against a guy in Yoel Romero, yes, he\u2019s older, but this is a guy who accomplished more in wrestling that Nickal did on the international, on the global circuit,\u201d Florian continued on Nickal. \u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about the Olympics, world championships, all that stuff, no shame in losing to someone like Yoel Romero, but I don\u2019t know.\u201d (h\/t MMA Fighting<\/a>)<\/p>\n Nickal is targeting a return to the Octagon later this year, potentially on the upcoming White House card. He is 8-1-0 in his professional MMA career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC middleweight star Bo Nickal\u2019s recent withdrawal from Real American Freestyle 5 has one legendary combatant extremely concerned.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,17832,786,60296,785,85,787,39910],"class_list":{"0":"post-425442","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-bo-nickal","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-kenny-florian","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc","16":"tag-yoel-romero"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425442","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=425442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}