Cain Velasquez reacts to Conor McGregor’s standoff with the UFC

While many fans and members of the MMA community are taking sides in Conor McGregor’s standoff with the UFC, former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez offers an interesting perspective on things.

Velasquez, who won the UFC heavyweight championship twice and defended it twice, understands the promo work that a champion must do, and thus offered an interesting take on McGregor’s standoff with the UFC.

He spoke at the UFC 200 media day, as transcribed by MMAFighting:

“I’m doing it, everybody else is doing it,” Velasquez said Tuesday at a UFC 200 media day. “Can I see his side? No, not really. I’m doing it. Everybody else is doing it. If he had to do way more than what we had to do, OK then, yes. I could definitely see that. But if he’s not, if he’s doing the same thing, then no. We’re all doing it.”

“I feel that we all do have obligations to do this kind of stuff,” Velasquez said. “I’m a guy that hates doing this. When I first started to fight, I thought it was just training and fighting and that was it. ‘OK, you’ve gotta do interviews.’ [I was like,] ‘What?’ Doing it now, yeah I’m kind of comfortable with doing it. I can do it pretty easily, I feel like. I feel like it is part of the job. You’ve gotta do this and train and fight.”

While Velasquez believes that promo is part of the job, he admits that he doesn’t care if McGregor skips out on promo work and still fights.

“Again, that’s not fair to the other fighters I would say, also,” Velasquez said. “But me personally, I don’t care. You came, you didn’t come. If he fights on the card, if he doesn’t, I’m just happy to be back. That’s it.”