Even though he was the victim of a shocking release, a now free agent Rodriguez doesn’t harbor any ill will towards the UFC.
“No hard feelings. You’ve got to move on from things,” Rodriguez said on The MMA Hour. “People live in the past too much. They live the past. I’ve been learning, this is one of the things that I’ve been learning: If you are living in the past, you’re depressed. If you are living in the future, you have anxiety. If you live in the present, you are happy. So I’ve just been slowly learning how to be here and live in the moment, live in the present, and don’t let any little stuff bother me. I cannot let little stuff bother me for the rest of my life. This doesn’t stop here. This is the just the beginning of something greater.”
Rodriguez went 6-1-0 during his time in the UFC (10-2-0 overall) and his last bout in the promotion was a TKO loss to former UFC Lightweight Champion Frankie Edgar at UFC 211.
There were reports that Rodriguez was cut from the UFC for refusing fights, but the featherweight star says that isn’t true.
“I got to talk to (UFC matchmaker) Sean Shelby and I told him I was able to fight Josh Emmett in February in Orlando, Florida, to headline that event (UFC on FOX 28). And I accepted,” Rodriguez said. “I stepped up, and I learned that Josh Emmett wouldn’t accept the fight, or I don’t know if the UFC didn’t want to give it to me or whatever, then I was replaced with Jeremy Stephens. Jeremy Stephens took that fight…I was like, okay, I’ll fight Zabit (Magomedsharipov) if you give me more money in LA because I understand how big of an event it is, and they said no. I was like, okay, if you don’t want to give me more money to fight him in LA, why don’t you give [the fight] to me in Russia, and there’s no need to do any negotiation for that. I want him in Russia. Why? Because he was calling me out. I’m the guy who, I never say much, I just act. I don’t have to be talking about this on my social media.”
Now that Rodriguez is a free agent, it does leave the fighter with the ability to sign with whatever promotion he wants to.
