Yoel Romero knows he deserves the blame for missing weight for his wrestling match against Bo Nickal at RAF 5 in January, but he still believed the highly touted UFC prospect should have faced him on the mats that night.<\/p>\n
While it wasn\u2019t the main event, the showdown between Romero and Nickal was one of the most anticipated matches ever booked in RAF. Unfortunately, Romero came in seven pounds overweight and Nickal opted not to move forward with the match. The 48-year-old Olympic silver medalist decided to still compete on the card, instead facing NCAA champion Stephen Buchanan, who handily defeated Romero.<\/p>\n
Even though it was a wrestling and not MMA, Romero feels Nickal was likely saving face by not moving forward with the match because the results could come back to haunt him one day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing, you\u2019ve got to respect everybody\u2019s point of view,\u201d Romero told MMA Fighting. \u201cYou can\u2019t get somebody else to think the way that you think. That\u2019s why this country is so wonderful because you have the ability to make decisions and do what you feel. Bo Nickal is just thinking about his career and that was Bo\u2019s priority was himself and his career. On top of that, I understand with my background and how successful I\u2019ve been and how powerful I\u2019ve been in wrestling, to not want to fight me, especially with me being seven pounds above weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, Bo Nickal is not just thinking about what\u2019s happening at RAF for wrestling, he\u2019s also thinking about his career in the UFC. Bo had just had a big victory in the UFC and that\u2019s coming off a bad loss and then coming off a win to come fight me knowing what I could have done to him. When you\u2019re so preoccupied with what people think, especially the fans and another organization, these are the kind of decisions people are prone to make just to protect themselves. You tend to worry more about what people think about you and what this could do for your career than what you\u2019re doing for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romero was a prominent wrestler in his day, but it\u2019s undeniable that the vast majority of his fame came from competing in the UFC where he was a multi-time title challenger and constant threat in the middleweight division.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Nickal is still working his way up the ranks and has long been pegged as a future champion in the UFC after claiming three NCAA titles while wrestling at Penn State. Romero knows losing to him\u2014no matter the sport\u2014wouldn\u2019t look good for Nickal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a fighter in the UFC, so I\u2019ve been in the UFC and I was released from the UFC,\u201d Romero said. \u201cTo have Bo Nickal come in and even though it\u2019s not a UFC match or MMA match but wrestling, to lose against me\u2014Bo Nickal is probably somebody in talks to fight someone like Khamzat Chimaev. It probably wouldn\u2019t look good for him to lose against me in a wrestling match when Chimaev\u2019s strength is wrestling. That\u2019s what it all boils down to. That\u2019s what I\u2019m thinking.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, you\u2019re going in to fight me and then you have to worry not about the repercussions of your career but what people are going to say and on top of that you\u2019re fighting me at seven pounds above the contracted weight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romero says if Nickal was putting the sport of wrestling ahead of his own goals and desires the match probably would have proceeded. Instead, Nickal was risking potential public humiliation if he wrestled and lost\u2014and that may have became his priority after Romero missed weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he would have been thinking about the sport and what this is doing, obviously RAF and the platform that it\u2019s creating, if he really would have cared more about the sport than himself, he would have gone through with the match,\u201d Romero said. \u201cThe mentality of a wrestler in the sport of wrestling is very different than the mentality of a mixed martial artist in the sport of mixed martial arts. The sport of wrestling, you\u2019ve got to think about what you\u2019re doing today is going to be beneficial to your future. Olympic cycle has four years. So you\u2019ve got people, they prepare for three years for the Olympics. Overall, you\u2019re worried about the results, not so much about your future but how you keep improving towards your goal, which is doing well and winning a medal in the Olympic games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not the case with Bo Nickal. Bo Nickal is protecting himself in RAF, he can\u2019t take a loss against me because of what that might do for him in the UFC.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Nickal turned down the match, Romero ended up suffering a loss to Buchanan by technical fall, which obviously wasn\u2019t the result he wanted.<\/p>\n
That said, Romero understood that competing that night mattered more for the sport of wrestling than his own ego being attached to winning or losing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went forward with the match, they changed my opponent and I went forward with the match,\u201d Romero said. \u201cBasically, that\u2019s because what RAF is doing is for the good of the sport. I really pushed myself hard for that weight when there was some back and forth on health issues and what not of my opponent but I went through and I fought and I could have backed out but I know how important it was for me to fight on that stage and the sport. So I went through with it. It is what it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day it\u2019s all about the sport and growing the sport and bringing some of the legends from back in the day in this beautiful platform and just helping the future of the sport to move forward. It\u2019s a shame the fight didn\u2019t happen but I went out and competed and I did my thing. I\u2019m hopeful that the sport keeps evolving and growing where it needs to be. I\u2019m hopeful that eventually that match between me and Bo takes place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yoel Romero knows he deserves the blame for missing weight for his wrestling match against Bo Nickal at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,168750,168751,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-441032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-raf-wrestling","tag-raf-wrestling-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}