It seems like the long-time MMA cutman Jacob "Stitch" Duran has been fired from the company due his comments against Zuffa's Reebok deal. With the apparel deal going to effect this month no other sponsors outside of Reebok will be permitted to adorn those in the Octagon. Along with fighters, the cutmen were also equally affected by the deal, as they lost all their sponsors. When the MMAjunkie Radio spoke with Stitch Duran about this, he replied:
But it seems the UFC bosses were not happy with these comments and have relieved Duran of his duties. Duran himself confirmed the news via Twitter:
UFC officials are yet to confirm the news, but Duran spoke to MMA Fighting's Marc Raimondi following his firing. Here’s what he said:
"I learned from that," Duran said. "There's no way that me as a person would go through that, as an adult, go through that again. It's been coming in the years where the UFC has just shown no respect for the great work that the cutmen do."
Duran said that he might have been most upset that UFC president Dana White didn't call him personally. White was the one who brought him on in 2001 after seeing him work a K-1 show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Duran said he and White worked together to establish the UFC's cutman program and gives White credit for "changing my whole career."
"That's another thing that pisses me off, that he didn't have the balls to call me directly," Duran said of White. "He had some other guys call me."
"It's not like I'm going to lack any type of work," Duran said. "It's just that I really enjoyed working with the fighters and the people in the UFC. To get a nut shot by Dana in him not calling me and having the balls to call me, it just showed me the kind of characters that I was dealing with."
(Source: mmamania, bloodyelbow )
