Sherdog.com: Let’s move away from the UFC and on to your future now. What’s with the Tito Ortiz (Pictures) thing? It’s been posted that you are going to fight Tito but now he signed with UFC again.
Sherdog.com: Where did the whole Tito Ortiz (Pictures) thing come from? Was that the first you heard of it when Josh called you, or did you hear that before hand?
Lindland: That’s one of the names I’ve heard is going to be part of the WFA possibly. There’s a bunch of names I heard that are possibly gonna be part of the WFA, you know, basically anybody that’s not under contract right now with another organization that’s a top level fighter they want to go out and get. They want to get the best fighters they can get and put together real fights against top competitors against top competitors. They don’t want to put number-one guys, ranked guys against guys that aren’t even in the rankings for title fights and stuff like that.
Sherdog.com: And that makes sense. That’s the way a fight organization should be run.
Lindland: Right, but that’s the way some promoters are running things right now.
Sherdog.com: Exactly. How excited are you to be a member of the WFA? How far do you think they can take the organization as far as catching the UFC maybe even surpassing them?
Lindland: I don’t know much about the organization other than they’re willing to put together good match-ups, they’re willing to spend the money to go out and get good fighters. They’re not trying to nickel and dime every fighter.
Sherdog.com: Do you think they might make the mistake and blow all the money right off the bat by signing all kinds of fighters to huge contracts?
Lindland: I hadn’t really thought about that. I hope not. Now that you mention it, I hope not (laughs).
Sherdog.com: Hey, it’s happened before.
Lindland: Yeah, I don’t know. I have no idea what their business motto is. I just know that they’re excited to get me on board, I’m excited to fight for them and they’re gonna go out and get me the best fighters they can possibly find to fight me, regardless of what weight class it’s in — if it’s in 185 or 205, they’re gonna go out and get me the best opponents they can find.
Sherdog.com: The contract you have in the WFA, is that your three-fight deal no matter what? Or could you fight once and then go fight somewhere else come back to the WFA, or is it one, two, three etc. exclusively?
Lindland: It’s very similar to other organizations’ fight contracts as far as if you lose your first one you’re not guaranteed the next one. But they made it very clear that they want me to be a part of this organization. Win, lose or draw, they want me to be a part of them. As far as the contract reads, it’s pretty standard.
Sherdog.com: Do you agree with contracts that are structured that way?
Lindland: I think it is what it is. I don’t know, maybe if you were a better negotiator then you could get a better deal (chuckles) where you are guaranteed to stay no matter how many fights you lose. But I anticipate going out there, performing and winning.
Sherdog.com: As you know by now, you have many fans and many people who aren’t exactly Lindland fan boys. When the UFC basically booted you, many of them were saying things such as “Good riddance, he sucked anyway,” or "Who cares because Lindland was boring,” etc. But you also have the core group who were and still are mad because you were promised a title shot publicly.
Lindland: The thing is that my number-one priority is to go out there and perform as an athlete. Sure, I’d like to be considered exciting. But I feel that a lot of my fights have been exciting. If my fights are not exciting, it’s usually because the other fighter is being passive. I am pushing the pace every fight and if my fighting style doesn’t equate to what people consider to be exciting, let’s change the rules. Let’s make it so that every single [fight] is exciting, i.e.: more stand-ups. We’ve added that. In my last fight, I got stood up numerous times but the fight kept ending up on the ground. Or we can just find fighters who stop takedowns and who are going to force the fight to be on the feet. If the fans really want to see more action on the feet, then put me in against someone who stops me from taking them down. My problem with this, though, is take a guy like Evan Tanner (Pictures) who went out there and got his head punched in and took a lot of punishment (from Rich Franklin (Pictures)) or Jeremy Horn (Pictures) who stood there in front of Chuck Liddell (Pictures) and got his head punched in. But take my fight where I honestly don’t think I took a singly hit (to my face) in the 15 minutes we fought. I didn’t walk away with a single mark on my face, but somehow I am boring and those guys who got their heads punched in are warriors. I don’t know how that works, but (laughs) I guess you are only a warrior if you stand in front of somebody and let him punch you in the face.
Sherdog.com: Exactly. Boxing fans are the same way. Arturo Gatti is the greatest because he gets his head caved in with every fight but Floyd Mayweather is boring because he is too slick.
Lindland: (Laughs) Yeah. Mayweather is real boring (laughs again).
Sherdog.com: Of course I have asked you this before, but it’s still apparent that you can care less when some fans say, “Oh Matt Lindland (Pictures) sucks! He is so boring!”
Lindland: Fans are going to say what they are going to say. It’s not that I don’t care because, sure, you want to build a fan base and you want people to want to see you fight. But I do think there are a lot of people out there who want to see me fight. I know there are a lot of people who want to see the best fighters regardless of their styles. That is what sport is about. If this is going to turn into only entertainment, then I guess we should just go out there and get more guys who will just stand there, who are sub-par fighters, and just get punched.
Sherdog.com: And lastly, Matt, what is the latest with SportFight, your own MMA organization?
Lindland: We are still putting on shows, of course. We just recently traveled to Denver and we are coming back to Portland, Oregon. We are looking for bigger venues on the West Coast. We are waiting to see what happens in California with the sanctioning of the sport. We are also in negotiations with a lot of different networks. It’s a slow process and it’s not going to happen overnight. SportFight’s only been around for a couple of years. We are doing what we are supposed to do and we are still on pace with getting our show on television, we are putting on bigger and better fight cards all the time. We are doing the right thing with it. SportFight was really started because I was not getting enough fights in the UFC and I needed something to supplement my income. My priority has always been to fight and when I signed with the UFC with exclusive deals, but they were only using me once every three or four or even six months between fights. I just wasn’t getting enough fights in. And when you are not fighting, you need to do something to supplement your income.