Ben Rothwell is not a happy man. The veteran heavyweight was left without a fight at last weekend’s event in Dublin after opponent Stipe Miocic pulled out due to an injury. While Stipe has already been re-book, Rothwell has not. But as a guest on The MMA Hour yesterday, Rothwell didn’t vent his anger at that situation.
He went after a couple of legends that have found themselves in hot water lately – Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort.
Rothwell, who failed a test for elevated testosterone in 2013 and was suspended for nine months, believes that his situation and theirs are very different because those two didn’t handle their situations the right way. First, he went off on Belfort (transcription via MMA Fighting):
“The difference is I want to address it, because I face my problems. That’s it. I face my problems. I take them on. I take responsibility. And man, Vitor was awesome when I met him in July, how nice he was to me and all this stuff. It just really sucks to hear that. Come on, man. Be the warrior. Be the man and face this. It happened. There’s nothing you can do about it. This is your responsibility. You went through this. This is yours. F–king own it. Just deal with it.”
Then he switched to Silva, while continuing on with Belfort:
“The running and stuff, I don’t know, it doesn’t look good,” Rothwell said of Belfort. “Didn’t he watch who could’ve been looked at as the GOAT, in Silva? I’m going to say it, Anderson Silva destroyed his legacy. Not because he got busted, but after the fact, him continually denying (everything), showing just what a coward he is. No respect from me whatsoever. To contstantly be like, really dude? You were tested multiple times. You had these substances in your body. Like, who are you trying to lie to? You got busted. You’re a cheat. You f–ked up. Royally. Why are you going to sit here and continue to say you didn’t do it? It’s a disgrace. And you’re not a man. You’re not a man. I don’t care. You can throw some good punches and kicks, but inside as a person, you are gone. You’re nothing.
“And I don’t want to see Vitor take this (route),” Rothwell continued. “Kind of running from it. He didn’t deny anything. But avoiding this is almost just as bad. It’s like, don’t do that, man. Just deal with this. It’s no big deal. You got a fight against Henderson. You can make everybody forget. You’re getting there, you’re testing now, you’re clean, go in there and beat Henderson. Great, man, we’ll move on from this. But like you said, it just kind of makes matters worse when people don’t want to handle their business the right way.”
He also addressed his own situation from 2013:
“People will criticize me, but you can look at my reports and see that, dude, I had a case. I could’ve fought it,” Rothwell said. “The commission, the Wisconsin commission gave me a warning because they were like, ‘Ben did not have an advantage. We have eight weeks of testing. Yes, he was high the night of the fight. He was low the week of and all these eight weeks before.’ And you know what? I could’ve fought the whole thing. The UFC was the one that gave me a suspension. And you know what I said? I said it’s my fault. It’s 100-percent my fault. Even though a doctor was prescribing it and overlooking everything, it’s not the doctor’s fault. It was my choice. And that’s it. That’s the difference between me and Anderson Silva.”
Rothwell (35-9, 5-3 UFC) is currently on a three-fight win streak and is ranked at number seven in the official UFC heavyweight rankings.
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