Jorge Masvidal is one of the biggest stars in MMA from his time as a top UFC welterweight. He recently appeared on Mike Perry’s Overdogs podcast and opened up about his future competition plans now that he is focused on promoting bare-knuckle events.
Despite now wearing the promoter hat for his growing promotion named Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA, Masvidal revealed he still feels that itch to compete after a 20-year-long career in MMA.
In particular, Masvidal has his sights set on finally crossing over into the world of professional boxing.
“I feel like I gotta do some boxing match. I wanna do that. I always wanna do that throughout my career. I didn’t get a chance to. And now the opportunity has come up. The UFC has been very gracious at giving me permission to take some boxing matches, so that’s something I’m definitely looking to do.”
Masvidal discussed how he first fell in love with the sport of boxing at just 8 or 9 years old, before he discovered MMA as a teenager.
He said: “I ended up getting married to MMA, but boxing was like the first thing I saw on TV that I could like wow understand it, you know… but I saw boxing, it was like holy smokes man. I f**king love it. And since then I’ve always been a huge fan of the sport.”
While Masvidal is clearly excited about the prospect of testing his skills in the boxing ring, competing in bare knuckle is likely off the table. When asked directly if he would ever compete in one of his own bare-knuckle events, Masvidal replied that he would not since his hands are too dangerous.
“My hands ain’t too bad, man. So I definitely wanna put the boxing gloves on. I couldn’t do the bare knuckle stuff cuz it’d be like wham and done man with these hands. So f**king I definitely want to put the boxing gloves on and f**king get to it, you know what I’m saying.”
Masvidal built his reputation in MMA with his punching power, which was on full display in his highlight-reel knockouts of Darren Till, Ben Askren and Donald Cerrone. It’s no surprise that he believes his hands are too dangerous to be unleashed without gloves on at this stage of his career.
Nonetheless, the hunger to compete still burns inside Masvidal after a 20-year career in MMA that saw him engage in numerous all-time classic matches. While he is content to promote the next generation of MMA competitors for now, fans would love to watch Masvidal test his skills in the boxing ring.