Whittaker On Fighters Turning Down UFC Sydney Bout

Robert Whittaker struggled to land an opponent for his UFC Sydney return next year.

The former middleweight champion told Ariel Helwani that several light heavyweights passed on fighting him before Bogdan Guskov agreed to the Feb. 6 co-main event. Whittaker had pushed for a November or December booking after his July TKO over Nikita Krylov but ran into a wall of declines. "I wanted to get in there sooner; I wanted to get in around that November or December period," he said, per BJPENN.com. "We were trying to get dates and names, and guys weren't jumping at the bit to jump up and fight."

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Guskov Steps Up After Others Turn Down Whittaker

Whittaker said he felt grateful when Guskov accepted the matchup. "We threw out the fight to a bunch of other guys, and it didn't work for them," he added. The delay worked in his favor in one respect — the Sydney card marks his first home-city bout in 12 years, dating back to his middleweight debut in the promotion.

Whittaker is 27-9 and enters the bout on a one-fight win streak at heavyweight/" class="internal-link text-bone underline decoration-ash/30 hover:decoration-gold underline-offset-2">light heavyweight. He dropped consecutive losses to Khamzat Chimaev and Reinier de Ridder at middleweight before moving up in weight. A second win at 205 pounds would position him for a title-shot conversation in a division that has seen recent shuffling at the top.

🎟️ Get tickets: Buy tickets to UFC Sydney on Ticketmaster →

UFC Sydney goes down Feb. 6 with Whittaker and Guskov in the co-main event slot.

Reported via:

• BJPenn — Robert Whittaker claims several fighters turned him down ahead of UFC Sydney return