Yoel Romero defends controversial middleweight title shot

Yoel Romero is on a two-fight losing streak, having given up competitive decisions to Paulo Costa and Robert Whittaker in his last two fights. Nonetheless, the Cuban Olympian has been granted the next shot at UFC middleweight champ Israel Adesanya. The pair will collide in the main event of UFC 248 this Saturday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Given that Romero is on a losing streak, many fans have been critical of his receiving a title shot. Romero himself, however, isn’t sweating this criticism.

Speaking at a media day on Monday in Los Angeles, the ferocious middleweight defended his title shot. He reminded that Adesanya asked for this matchup after Costa got injured, and claimed that he should have gotten the nod in his recent wars with Costa and Whittaker.

“I’m not thinking about that I lost two fights,” Romero said (via MMA Junkie). “I’m not feeling like this. This doesn’t have my attention because we do this like the old school. The best don’t want to fight, but need to fight the best. When (Adesanya) says something like this, I’m not thinking about the record. I’m not thinking about nothing. I just want to fight the best in the division. He said, ‘I want to fight Yoel.’ I say, ‘Thank you.’ Because that’s exactly what we do. I stay in the same position with him.

“I don’t want to fight with No. 10 in the rankings. I want to fight with the next in line – the No. 1 in the line. That’s why I stay here. I don’t stay here because nobody give me nothing. I work a lot – very hard. I won the (Paulo Costa) fight, the (Robert) Whittaker No. 2 fight. It is what it is – that’s what happened.”

Do you think Yoel Romero deserves a middleweight title shot despite his recent setbacks?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 3/3/2020.