Welterweight fighter Neil Magny was just one of many fighters who participated in the UFC fighters retreats a little over a week ago.
Magny had a speech prepared about fighter unity, but Snoop Dog’s security team didn’t give him the chance to deliver it.
“They said right now we have to lock this space down because we got Snoop Dogg and his security staff and stuff like that, and for security reasons we can’t allow you to go up on stage use the microphone,” Magny said to MMA Fighting. “Immediately after that, they said if I want to stick around afterwards and give the speech then, I was more than welcome to do so. I was like, alright, I’ll hang around until afterwards and do it. But by the end of the evening with Snoop Dogg being on stage, open bars and being there a couple of hours and him coming out two-and-a half hours late, it was just way too late in the evening. At that point, the people who were standing around weren’t interested and weren’t in a position to even take in what I had to say.”
Although Magny never got a chance to deliver his speech live, the fighter did leave a copy for us to read:
“First I want to thank the UFC staff for working so hard to put this event together. Thank you guys, we really appreciate all you do.
“Second, I want to address fighter issues. We don’t need a group of fancy lawyers to speak for us, we need to speak up for one another. There are deals in place that may not please everyone and there’s not much we all can do about it. Instead of bitching about the things we can’t change, let’s work on the things that we can control within our reach. There are about 300 of us here this weekend posting about this athlete retreat on social media. By the end of the weekend, our posts will have reached millions of people.
“What if we all came together to support our colleagues the same way? If, say, Matt Brown has an idea, how well will it do if we supported it? And when the next guy has an idea, we support him or her? Let’s stop beating each other down outside of the cage and start helping each other.”
Magny doesn’t have another fight scheduled at the moment, as his last bout was a decision win over Johny Hendricks at UFC 207.
