After months of speculation as to who would top April’s bumper UFC 300 card, Dana White came clean on Saturday night.
The UFC boss confirmed via a social media post last weekend that Alex Pereira will defend his light heavyweight title against former champion Jamahal Hill, whose title reign was ended last year when he sustained an out-of-competition achilles injury forcing him to an extended spell on the sidelines.
The fight, which will be between two of the 205-pound division’s most aggressive strikers, is expected to be fireworks — though some fight fans suggested online that they were disappointed by the lack of ‘name value’ of the fight, particularly after the likes of Conor McGregor and even Brock Lesnar, Georges St-Pierre and Ronda Rousey were linked to the event.
But Hill, who will seek to go 13-1 (1) at the fight in Las Vegas in a couple of months time, has no time for such bellyaching.
“There’s been a lot of outrage, a lot of disappointment and things like that,” Hill said on his YouTube channel, via MMA Fighting, of the reaction to the fight announcement in recent days.
“To be honest, it’s crazy to me because for the most part a lot of these people are the same people that have spent the better part of a year or however long calling me ‘cry baby,’ but it’s crazy to see how a card can be stacked — the main card literally has a former champion or champion in every single fight and some even facing former champions.
“In every single fight in the main card, each one of the prelims is worthy of being its own separate main event and people are crying. Like, let’s really be real. It’s really, really crying because you had unreal expectations for something.”
But some of the speculation as to the identity of the UFC 300 main eventers meant that some fans would be let down regardless of who was booked, Hill said.
“I think I saw one comment that said, ‘I was expecting Conor vs. Jesus Himself,’” Hill said. “At this point, now I’m convinced that wouldn’t have been enough. Y’all could have got Mario vs. King Kong, y’all could have got Wolverine vs. Iron Man, you could have gotten anything, Hulk vs. Superman, Spider-Man vs. Batman, you could have got any of this and you wouldn’t have been happy.
“So all I can say as far as the whole ‘this is a disappointment’ and it not being worthy of this spot and things like that is that’s crazy.”
