Yoel Romero wants middleweight title shot to determine ‘the real champion’

Yoel Romero wants a shot at UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.

The Cuban wrestler believes he needs to fight Adesanya to determine the true king of the middleweight division.

“I’m staying ready for the fight because I’m still hungry,” Romero said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show this week (via MMA Fighting). “I want this fight to happen because many people talk, ‘Who is the true [champion]? Who is the real champion of middleweight?’ And the people know who it is because everybody has seen what happened the last three fights before. Now Israel has the belt, the people want to see who is the real champion.”

While Yoel Romero is known as one of the scariest fighters in MMA, his naysayers will be quick to complain that he’s lost three of his last fought fights: a pair of decision losses to Robert Whittaker, and a decision loss to Paulo Costa. That’s hardly the kind of streak that warrants a title shot.

Yet Romero counters this argument by reminding fight fans that all three of these losses were incredibly competitive. In fact, the decision arguably could have gone his way in all three fights.

“The people see that I am losing three fight. Yes, I’m losing three fight,” Romero said. “But when you ask them, inside their soul, ‘Did Yoel Romero lose?’ Yoel Romero did not lose. Yoel Romero is still the winner. Now you see what happened, the people want to see the really best people fight. Who is the best middleweight right now? I fight everybody, the best people in my division, the best fighters, and beat them. I not lose. I beat everyone. I feel like the day when I lose, I’m ready for the day when I lose because everybody have the beginning and everybody have the end of their career. But it’s not my day. I’m still training, I’m still hungry. The day when it comes and I lose I say, ‘Okay, today I lose it because it is what it is.’

Do you think Yoel Romero deserves the next shot at the UFC middleweight belt?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 11/19/2019.