At the very least, flyweight Nathan Manes is demanding an explanation if his contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship is not renewed.
Manes finished his contract with UFC last month following a unanimous decision win over Jimmy Flick, and “Mayhem” was hoping to hear from the UFC about a contract extension, but hasn’t heard anything since.
“To be honest with you, I haven’t heard anything,” Manes told MMAjunkie.com. “We’ve sent out a couple different messages. I messaged them two weeks after the fight and then we’ve made some probes after that, but we haven’t even really heard back. All I can say is you guys can speculate.”
UFC 304: Edwards vs. Muhammad, Saturday at 10 PM ET on ESPN+. Order now! With his win over Flick, Manes has won two straight fights and improved to 5-2 overall with the promotion. Manes’ only two losses at UFC have come at the hands of elite Dagestan contenders Tagir Uranbekov and Umar Nurmagomedov. Manes believes he’s done enough to re-sign with UFC, but his exclusivity negotiating period has now ended. He’s already started receiving offers from other promotions, but he plans to wait in anticipation for a UFC offer.
“I feel like I’ve done my part to earn my spot,” he said. “There’s no particular reason. I’m 5-2 with three finishes. I’ve fought some pretty tough guys. I want to be in the UFC, and if not, at least have a reason why I wasn’t re-signed. Other than that, I want to keep fighting. I’ve already got a few offers. So, I’m just going to take a step back and see what happens and keep going.”
Even if this is the end of his UFC journey, Manes will at least want to know where he went wrong.
“I just want a reason. I think that’s good business,” he said. “We’ve never said anything bad about UFC on our end. We’ve never posted anything that we shouldn’t have posted. We’ve taken everything they’ve thrown at us. I just want a reason. What can I do better? Is it an opponent’s issue? Is it a personal issue? Anything like that. So I hope that they’ll listen to us and reach out even if they don’t want me to, and that will make things a little easier. That’s probably the only way.”
