According to a report from MMA Fighting, lightweight Melvin Guillard was released by the UFC last night. His agent Malki Kawa told the outlet that he was looking to get his fighter signed elsewhere.
“We’re working to get him signed somewhere else,” he said. “I’m going to do what’s best for Melvin.”
UFC President Dana White has been very critical of Guillard’s performance as of late, suggesting that his mouth’s been writing checks that his fighting can’t cash. Leading up to his last fight against Michael Johnson on March 8th, Guillard promised the fans violence and verbally berated Johnson, proclaiming:
“I got more experience, I’m the better fighter, I’m the stronger fighter, I’m the faster fighter, and I got knockout power. Mike’s been rallying up some wins lately, but I’m any fighter’s kryptonite. Nobody wants to fight me. In the back of his mind, he’s probably like, ‘Damn, I really have to fight Melvin Guillard?’ I’m just going to call it like that. I’ll say that to any fighter. I’m not an easy fight for anybody. I can look right through that kid. He ain’t no gangster, that’s for sure.”
Guillard lost the fight via unanimous decision. White felt he didn’t deliver on his prolific bragging and made no bones about speaking on it.
“There’s no doubt Melvin ran the entire fight and was incredibly passive, the complete opposite of how he used to fight,” White said.”There was a lot of smack talk leading up to that fight, and those are the fights that everybody gets excited about, and nine times out of 10 they end up like tonight. Those drive me crazy.”
One of the things I really like about the UFC is their commitment to their fan base. Fans get the fights they want to see and the fighters are held to a standard of performance. Clearly Melvin Guillard wasn’t rising to that standard lately.