Photo by Esther Lin.
Gegard Mousasi is continuing his campaign to meet Vitor Belfort in the Octagon.
The former Strikeforce light heavyweight title holder took to Twitter late Thursday to let UFC President Dana White know that fans want to see the fight happen.
“Everybody wants me to fight Vitor,” Mousasi wrote, tagging White and others in the tweet. “[I’ll] fight him at any weight.”
For the past three months, Mousasi has made it known that he intends to drop a weight class and compete at 185 pounds. He spoke with GRACIEMAG.com and mentioned Belfort as a possible opponent once he makes the cut to middleweight, but Belfort has gone on record as saying he’s not interested. In fact, Belfort said Mousasi has more work to do before he earns a fight with “The Old Lion.”
“If Mousasi wants to fight someone, go fight [Luke] Rockhold or go fight [Michael] Bisping,” Belfort told Sherdog.com. “He has to prove himself.”
Mousasi made his UFC debut in February with a win over Ilir Latifi at UFC on Fuel TV 9 in Sweden. Latifi was a late replacement for Alexander Gustafsson, who just days before the fight sustained a cut that the Swedish MMA commission said made him unfit to compete.
The win was one that most experts expected Mousasi to collect, as Latifi wasn’t ranked at all near the top of the weight class. The drubbing of the late replacement did nothing to convince Belfort that Mousasi deserves a shot against the UFC’s No. 2-ranked contender.
As much as fighting is an individual sport, Mousasi reiterated that his intentions aren’t completely selfish. The fans, he said, are the ones that want this fight more than anyone else. It’s the spectators’ desire for action, he said, that outweighs what both Belfort and Mousasi have in mind.
“It’s not about what I want or what Vitor wants,” Mousasi wrote. “Its all about the fans. This is a fight what my fans wants to see.”
