Octagon champion not living up to his promises? It’s sad for me, admits promoter Novotny

Oktagon planned two title fights for September, when the OKTAGON 35 tournament will be held in Brno. But in the end only one will take place, which was announced earlier. Promoter Ondřej Novotný revealed why the second one didn’t work out.

At the end of July, a great tournament took place at Štvanice. The performance of the evening was given by Filip Macek, who claimed the title match. And rightly so.

Macek has been consistently putting in great performances, but he is failing in important matches and he is working on it. He believes that the rematch with the champion Jonas Magard will be something else.

It was expected that their fight could take place in September at the tournament in Brno, but the Czech fighter got injured. “The injury is such that I think it would be possible to fight with it, but Filip doesn’t want to fight in a title fight,” Ondřej Novotný said on the Flight Through the World MMA podcast.

So the champion Magard got another offer. He could defend against another opponent. However, Novotny revealed that he turned down the fight. “It’s a surprise for me because we keep hearing that anyone, anywhere, especially to fight. But that’s not happening at the moment,” the Octagon promoter added.

Novotny noted, among other things, that a title fight has to match title qualities. Likewise, he admitted that he is sad that the fight will not happen. He would have liked to revive the bantamweight division. But besides the organization, there must be two fighters to do it, which is not the case now.

Macek suggested to the champion that the fight could be postponed for a month. That way it could take place in Frankfurt, Germany. Magard likes that. At least it would be close to home, he said.

And who was actually offered to Magarde? Apparently Brazilian Felipe Lima, who challenged him. He has a record of 11 wins and one loss. He only lost his first fight, and he’s been riding an 11-fight winning streak ever since.

Source: MMA Around the World, Octagon MMA