Marvin Vettori blasts Ariel Helwani, calls for a future fight with Darren Till

By Alfredo Zullino - March 6, 2020

UFC middleweight Marvin Vettori isn’t only a legit contender in his division, he’s also one of the most outspoken fighters on UFC roster.

Marvin Vettori

The Italian juggernaut isn’t a rookie when it comes to having some beefs on the web, as he uses the internet to call out fighters via his social media accounts, from time to time. He did that with Eric Spicely, then with Andrew Sanchez and more recently with the former UFC welterweight title contender Darren Till.

“The Italian Dream” already has a fight scheduled on March 21 against Darren Stewart, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to plan his next bout.

“I’ve called out Darren Till multiple times on social media. It’s not personal, I think he’s a nice guy”, the Italian middleweight told BJPenn.com, “But what we see he’s just a gimmick. He’s an overrated fighter. Plus, after he won against my teammate Kelvin Gastelum, with just one bout under the 185-pound limit, he cracked the top-5 middleweight ranking, so calling him out was the right thing to do. I’m sure I can beat him.”

Fighters are not the only people on Marvin Vettori’s blacklist, though. This past October he unloaded on one of the most known MMA media personalities, and ESPN reporter Ariel Helwani.

Vettori was furious because he wasn’t invited on Helwani’s show, but the latter claimed that “someone blocked that from happening”.

“I don’t know who or what he was referring too. All I know is that I deserved many times to be on that show, but he never asked to”, the Mezzocorona native stated. “I don’t like his persona. As a journalist, he has to be impartial but he’s not, he’s very biased during his interviews. He always wants to be the smart guy in the room bringing out the worst in fighters just for fame. You can tell what kind of person he is just looking at the time he was fired. He started apologizing, retracting his own words. I just don’t respect that. He had many occasions to call me on his show and he didn’t do that. But that’s ok. There will be a time in the near future when no one can do without talking about me.”

Marvin Vettori squares off against Darren Stewart on March 21 in London in the main card of UFC on ESPN+ 29.

This article first appeared on BJPENN.com on 3/6/2020.


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