Matt Brown’s daggers pierced right through Donald Cerrone’s soul during their obligatory staredown at the UFC 206 media day.
The fan-favourites clash in a potential fight of the night candidate at the Toronto event this weekend. Although this will mark the first time these two welterweights have thrown down inside the Octagon, they are familiar with each other having sparred together a few times in Colorado.
Not many fighters seem to have a problem with ‘Cowboy,’ but it became apparent at their pre-fight staredown that Brown most definitely has an issue with the streaking 170 lber.
When Cerrone hopped on stage, as calm and collected as ever, he offered his hand to his opponent. ‘The Immortal’ flat out rejected it and proceeded to give him his most terrifying thousand yard stare, which made for an incredibly tense moment.
Matt Brown doesn't need any more friends https://t.co/Yuwy6wR0GW
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) December 8, 2016
One might assume that Brown’s behaviour might have been sparked by some history when the two had trained together, but as he explained in his media scrum, that isn’t really the case. He admitted that Cerrone has “never been a friend simply because of his personality.
“I didn’t see him yesterday, but I will give him a cold shoulder. I mean, I have talked to him before, but that don’t make him a friend. I don’t care for him. I don’t care for his personality. Even when I talked to him, I didn’t really want to talk to him. I was just being cordial. I don’t have any good feelings towards him at all. I don’t like the way he acts. I don’t like the way he carries himself. I don’t like the way he represents the sport.”
Brown believes that it’s the people who Cerrone surrounds himself that has caused his ego to become so inflated. He claims that the foundations of this mindset are built on sand, and he aims to send it crashing down to reality on fight night.
“You can see the way he talks, he wants to be an alpha male and he wants to really portray that he’s something special. I think it’s all these yes men he got around him. I think he’s just being lied to by them telling him, ‘Oh Donald, you’re the champion, man! You’re so good!’ You’re so great! You’re going to be this and that.’ When really he’s just being lied to. It’s my job to go in there and expose that truth of him.”
He didn’t stop there either. Brown continued attacking Cerrone’s personality. He feels that he has a penchant for acting like a bully and the best way to shatter his confidence is to give him a taste of his own medicine.
“Most of my opponents I’m really respectful to and I think they’re respectful to me. I don’t know if he means it or not, maybe he’s just a douchebag of a person. I get the feeling he’s talking to other people, especially to other fighters, he feels like he’s above other people and he’s kind of a bully. You watch his fights where he lost, he got bullied back, and he don’t like that. That’s what I got to do to him.
Fight night can’t come soon enough. You don’t want to miss this one.
