Bellator champion Johnny Eblen claims the UFC announced ‘Poirier vs. Saint-Denis’ without “even a verbal agreement” in place

Bellator champion Johnny Eblen is claiming the UFC announced the ‘Poirier vs. Saint-Denis’ without ‘even a verbal agreement’ in place.

It was UFC CEO Dana White who, on January 10th, made the announcement of Poirier (29-8 MMA) vs. Saint-Denis (13-1 MMA) in the co-main lightweight event at UFC 299 which takes place on March 9th at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida.

“The Diamond” took to social media just yesterday advising the fight was off:

“There was no contractual agreement before the fight was announced and we couldn’t come to terms.”

Dustin Poirier’s training partner and Bellator middleweight champion, Johnny Eblen (14-0 MMA), happened to hear that news while speaking with’ Shak MMA‘ and shared his thoughts on the situation with the UFC:

“I just think it’s kind of horses**t because I know how much money the UFC makes and they can make that fight happen but they’re choosing not to because they’re being stingy, in a way. And the fact that no contract was signed, and they were willing to f**king announce it? It is f**king beyond me, man. That’s never happened to me.”

Continuing Eblen said there wasn’t even a verbal agreement in place with Dustin Poirier:

“Not even a verbal agreement, Dustin said! Dustin said, ‘Yeah that sounds good but we gotta get this deal worked out.’ But that’s not a verbal agreement. A verbal agreement is ‘Hey, you do this, this, and this, I’m in.’ And they’re like ‘Okay yeah we’ll do this, this, and this.’ ‘Okay I’ll fight him.’ And then you do the contract and then you sign the contract. There wasn’t even a verbal agreement on his end, so….”

Concluding, ‘Pressure’ Johnny Eblen stated:

“I think it was kind of crazy to me that they were even willing to promote it to this degree and then let it backfire like this.”

It was four hours after Dustin Poirier announced the fight was off that the 35-year-old fighter took to social media advising it was all just a “misunderstanding” and indeed the fight with Saint-Denis was back on.

Will you be watching UFC 299? do you think Poirier can get back in the win column by defeating Saint-Denis?

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