Brad Tavares ‘Disappointed’ in Dan Ige for Accepting Short-Notice UFC 303 Bout

Brad Tavares jokingly expressed disappointment in teammate Dan Ige for accepting a short-notice fight at UFC 303 .

Tavares (20-9) is scheduled to fight Jun Yong Park (17-6) in a middleweight matchup at UFC on ESPN 60 at the Apex in Las Vegas this weekend. Tavares was originally scheduled to share the card with Xtreme Couture teammate Ige, who was slated to trade leather with Jose Mariscal .

However, Ige ended up replacing Brian Ortega against Diego Lopes on four hours’ notice in the co-main event at UFC 303 last month. While Ige went on lose by unanimous decision, he gave Lopes a run for his money, putting the Brazilian in survival mode in the final frame. Ige subsequently asked for a spot on the highly sought-after UFC 306 card in September at the Sphere, which he was guaranteed by Dana White.

Tavares revealed that he and Ige had discussed potentially fighting at UFC 306 even before “50k” accepted the short-notice matchup. But now having to go through fight camp alone, Tavares jokingly called Ige “selfish” for taking up the UFC 303 fight.

“He got that 3 hour - 4 hour short notice and he’ll most like get to fight on that card [UFC 306] because of that,” Tavares said at the UFC on ESPN 60 media day. “But yeah, we were saying even before that opportunity, like, ‘Oh that would awesome to turnaround and get on that card. And bringing up Dan, I’m very disappointed in him for taking that four-hour fight. It was very selfish of him, we’re supposed to be in this together. Nah, I’m just kidding. I got my fight and Dan got his, he told me, ‘Hey, we’re on the same card again.’ I was stoked. It’s always good to suffer with a brother going through the fight week. And doing everything together. But then when I got the news he took that fight, I was like, ‘Well, we’re not going to be fighting together anymore.”

As brave as Ige is for accepting a fight on short notice, Tavares believes there is an upside to fighting in such circumstances. Tavares claims he also would have jumped at the opportunity to fight someone without having to go through a camp and cut weight.

“I think Dan, one – he’s a freaking hammer for doing it right. But it was super smart of him, it was a great opportunity. And look at how he did in that fight. Like imagine with a full fight camp what that fight would have looked like. The one good thing I’ll say about it, it would be nice, imagine you’re just chilling, they’re like, ‘Hey, you got to fight, you’re going to win, whatever weight you’re at, you’re going to fight at that weight.’ I’ll be like, ‘Okay, cool.’ And hopefully you hadn’t done a hard training session right before that. But yeah, it’s something that I definitely would jump at the opportunity if presented to me.”

Tavares is fresh off a TKO loss against Gregory Rodrigues . Meanwhile, his opponent, Park, is coming off a split decision loss against Andre Muniz in December, which snapped a four-fight winning streak.