Fans and pundits appear to have a morbid fascination with watching teammates fight each other, even if title contention of championship gold are not the incentivizing factors. This appears to be the case with Urijah Faber, who constantly has to bounce off questions about whether he is open to fighting his teammates, bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw or the consensus No. 2 fighter at featherweight Chad Mendes.
While Faber has been able to dodge the questions quite well in the past, his teammates chose a more overt approach and suggested that they would be open to the fight with the correct financial incentive.
Mendes was the latest to make such claims during his most recent appearance on Submission Radio:
“I mean it would have to be a pretty damn enticing offer, but yeah I’d have to sit down with Faber and kind of pencil things out and talk about it. But money talks and that’s what we’re in this businesses for. So you know I’m not ruling it out, but the money is going to have to be pretty damn good.”
However, that is not necessarily the ideal match-up for Mendes, who would rather focus his energy on working his way back to a third title shot at featherweight.
“Ideally I’d like to fight for the belt again, but you know really I think that’s going to come down to what happens between Conor and Aldo. If for whatever reason Conor beat him I think that I would probably be the next one in line, even if Frankie beat Faber. But I could see the UFC just going ahead and throwing him in there as well. So I mean I really don’t know. But Ideally Aldo beats Conor, and I get in there and get to make Aldo Mendes 3 happen. You know I truly believe that it’s me and him [Aldo] at the top of this division, and I think with the fight in the states, and like I said [if] I change a couple of small things, I win that fight and I’m the new featherweight world champion. So yeah that ideally would be perfect for me.”
Transcription taken from Submission Radio.
About the author
