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Former UFC Bantamweight Champion Dominick Cruz scored a decision win over Casey Kenney on the preliminary card of UFC 259.
A victorious Cruz called out Monster Energy’s Hans Molenkamp after the fight, stating that he wants to battle him for charity.
“He’ll probably love that he’s getting plugged like this, to be honest, so it’s actually a benefit for him, so he should thank me,” Cruz said at the UFC 259 post-fight press conference (via MMA Fighting). “It was just that we’re in a day and age where you can—If I take a picture with Conor McGregor like this, now I’m Conor McGregor’s friend, right? If I take a picture with Dominick Cruz and have him commenting on my page, we’re in a day and age where that looks like we’re friends. Well, I may be your friend, but you can’t use me in order to get clout as they put it. I’m not here to be used.
“Look at my face, look at my body, I get beat to death for a living. So when you try to force me and you text me if I don’t comment on your page, if I don’t give you an interview, that you’re going to take what pays my bills? What are we doing? Monster sponsors me, not you. This was a callout because he calls himself a pro fighter. He’s got a hundred pounds weight on me and I’m like, we can make this a win-win situation. Let’s do a charity event, Monster picks the charity, and then we scrap it out. He says he’s got three pro fights, let’s prove it, put your money where your mouth is. You’ve got a little, tiny guy calling you out for charity, not for anything else. Why not?”
Cruz has accused Molenkamp of making unreasonable demands from the fighters sponsored by Monster Energy and potentially holding out sponsorship payments.
UFC President Dana White sees things a little differently than Cruz does, but he does admit that Molenkamp is a “goofy dude.”
“It’s all weird,” White said at the UFC 259 post-fight press conference. “Is Hans a goofy dude? Yeah, he’s a very goofy dude. But they’re a sponsor. These guys are a sponsor, they’re great sponsors, they pay these guys a lot of money. Monster is one of these companies that really, really takes care of people and it’s their company. They can sponsor whoever they want, they can run their business however they want. This isn’t like a work situation where you’re working for somebody and you’re not happy about the way you’re being treated. This is a sponsorship deal. These guys can spend their money and run their company however they want to and nobody’s guaranteed money from a sponsor. It’s a privilege to get money from a sponsor. So if you don’t like the way they do business, don’t do business with them.
“They’ve been good to us. They’ve been good to the sport and they’ve definitely been good to the fighters. I get it, he doesn’t like him and some guys have a problem with him. It’s easy to figure that one out, but Monster as a company, they’ve been solid, they couldn’t be any better.”
A Monster Energy rep issued the following statement to MMA Fighting about the statements made by Cruz:
“We take any such allegations seriously and are looking into it at this time."
