Morning report: Dana White comments on the release of Junior dos Santos and Alistair Overeem: ‘We had a good run’

Earlier this week, UFC fans were caught off guard when two legends of the sport were released from the promotion. On Wednesday, former UFC heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos and former heavyweight Strikeforce champion Alistair Overeem were released amid continued UFC roster cuts, and in conversation with TMZ Sports, UFC president Dana White said , explains the decision for the company to separate two from each other. his most recognizable names.

“Nothing happened behind the scenes,” White said. ‘They’re both great guys who’ve had amazing careers here. In the first place, people are cut every week. I think the two are pretty obvious. This is nothing negative, but just a part of the sport. If you look at what they’ve been doing lately, you look at their age, you look at everything that’s going on, it’s pretty obvious. ”

Dos Santos and Overeem are just the latest in a series of high and low profile releases by the UFC. In December, White promised that “serious cuts” would come to the roster that swelled more than 700 fighters. Since then, the UFC has parted ways with names like Anderson Silva and Yoel Romero, and as with the two, White insists there was absolutely no hostility in the decision to release dos Santos and Overeem. In fact, White, he had nothing but good things to say about the two legends.

“Not even close,” White said when bad blood played a factor. ‘100 percent (it was friendly). We had a good run and loved Alistair, and the same with Junior dos Santos. Alistair Overeem never said no to a fight. Never turned down a fight, never said no, no one would fight. And Junior dos Santos is one of the most beautiful people in the sport. So nothing but wonderful things to say about both guys. ”

Dos Santos is a former heavyweight champion who has competed for the UFC for the past 12 years; recently, however, he fell into the octagon at difficult times and lost his last four fights in a row, all through KO. That being said, it is also noteworthy that his previous four opponents are currently ranked first, third, fourth and sixth in the world in the UFC rankings, respectively, and dos Santos himself is ranked at number 12. Conversely, Overeem has actually been running well lately. At the moment, the UFC heavyweight is in seventh place, Overeem won several times last year due to the rising prospects before being knocked out by Alexander Volkov in February.

The bottleneck for the UFC seems to be the age of the two future Hall of Famers. At 37 and 40 years old, dos Santos and Overeem certainly do not have many years left in their careers, and those who do will probably not bear the same kind of fruit as their younger years. As is always the case in sports, Father Time remains undefeated.

“It’s not even that (our relationship) went its course,” White concluded. ‘The one thing: age we all get. Those guys touch – I sit here and talk about how good they are, I do not want to sit here and sit on them, but listen, we are all getting old. We cut people every week. Every week people come and people go. ”

In their parts, dos Santos and Overeem took the split well, and each commented publicly to the UFC and thanked them for their time in the organization.

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Thanks for reading, enjoy the fights and see you tomorrow.

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