Roy "Big Country" Nelson 's UFC career on hold
Dana White, following Ultimate Fighting Championship event 122, gave the answer as to why a new opponent was not found for Roy Nelson when Shane Carwin pulled out of their scheduled UFC
bout. In an interview with MMAJunkie.com, White revealed that “Big Country” Nelson remains under contract with another organization.
Nelson was booked to fight Shane Carwin as the co-main event at UFC 125, scheduled for 1 January in Las Vegas. Carwin was forced to withdraw from the fight due to a back injury that later
required surgery.
After Carwin removed himself from the fight, there was a great deal of speculation as to who would replace him on the card. Rumours had Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic or Brock Lesnar requesting
the fight against Nelson. None of the rumours came to fruition and Nelson’s name was removed from the event.
On Saturday 13 November, White, the president of the UFC, broke the silence, “These guys go out and sign with these rinky-dink little promotion companies and sign these bad contracts,
and let's just say Roy Nelson is involved in a bad contract right now that he had before.”
White would not name the promotion that Nelson is tied to, but MMAJunkie reported that sources close to Nelson told them that the contract was with Roy Jones Jr.’s Square Ring Promotions.
Nelson did fight on a Jones-promoted card back in March 2009. He squared off against former UFC fighter Jeff Monson. Nelson lost the bout via unanimous decision. Nelson, according to records
with the Florida State Boxing Commission, was paid $30,000 for the fight.
White described the situation that Nelson may be in, “There's organizations that are locking these guys up to the old-school boxing contracts. The contracts that King and those guys were
doing back in the 60s, 70s and 80s where they have options on top of their options – so your contract never ends with these guys.”
For his part, Nelson posted the following on his Twitter feed on 12 November: “Trying to do some non-MMA related work just in case this fighting stuff doesn't work out.”
If White is correct in his knowledge of the situation, it may be a long time before we see Nelson in the Octagon.
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