Cung Le (9-3) last night revealed that he has requested a release from his UFC contract citing the recent problems with a drug test and the suspended one-year ban he received as the reason.
“I asked (my manager) Gary (Ibarra) to ask the UFC to release me for.. what they’ve done to me,” Le said on the Gross Point Blank podcast. “I really don’t want to be a part of a promotion that doesn’t give their fighters the benefit of the doubt.”
The 42-year-old pointed out his hard work for the UFC and after the controversy he felt let down by the promotion for their lack of faith in him.
“For me, whenever I do something, I give it 100 percent, whether I’m a father, or a husband, or being in China and trying to keep (The Ultimate Fighter: China) running because the camera crew over there, they’ve never done a reality show, and I’m literally there all day making sure they’re filming and holding the fort down over there for them.
“I got a bad taste in my mouth with the UFC, and I worked extremely hard and I sacrificed a lot for them, and there’s also a lot of perks to being a part of the UFC, but it’s not worth what they did.”
With his release pending the obvious topic of Bellator got brought up. Le fought for Scott Coker a number of times over at Strikeforce but the star said that fighting for Bellator is not a foregone conclusion.
“Just because I asked to be released doesn’t mean I’m going to run over to Bellator,” he said. “Yes, Scott’s been my friend for 20 years, and he would have never done anything like that. He would have given me the benefit of the doubt, and he would have gone out and done his research that all the facts were straight before they would have released it, because that’s the kind of person he is.”
Le also stated that he might just retire from the sport and will make his mind up in the coming months.
Alan’s Angle: A run to Bellator is the obvious thing to happen here if he is granted his release and that is a ‘BIG IF’. The UFC know that Le would easily jump to Bellator so why would they just let him go? I would be surprised if this doesn’t get messy and ends in Le retiring anyway in order to get out of his UFC contract.