Marlon Vera has yet to wrap his head around his latest stroke of misfortune.
After Bryan Caraway bowed out of a date with Jimmie Rivera at UFC Fight Night 103 due to injury, Vera seized the opportunity to fight a top 10 bantamweight and earn some much-needed scratch, only for Rivera to change his mind and put the kibosh on the adjustment just eight days before the event. The sixth-ranked Rivera claimed he wanted to spare Vera a beating and said a fight with the 24-year-old would do little to bolster his case for a title shot.
What particularly drew his would-be opponent's ire was citing Vera's daughter as another reason for changing his tune. Rivera said, "He's got a daughter that he's trying to make money to get her surgery done. I got a heart, man, I can't stand there and stop that."
"Saturday, I was relaxing at the gym because from Wednesday, since I wasn’t sure I was going to fight, I had already cut 15 pounds," Vera said, according to MMAFighting's Danny Segura. "So I was just relaxing and waiting, and that morning he (Rivera) posts online that he's not going to fight, that he's sorry with his fans.
"I took a screen shot and I sent it to my manager. So we began to ask what was going on and that's when MMA Fighting reported all those excuses or arguments that I'm not a ranked fighter, that he doesn't want to hurt me because it'd be bullying, and a bunch of barbarities. Then on top of that, he gets my daughter involved and that's when I really got mad, and I took it personal. If he wants to say that I'm not a fighter of his level, that's OK, but when you get my daughter involved that’s another thing."
"Chito" agreed to fight "El Terror" on short notice for far more than a push up the bantamweight pyramid. His daughter suffers from Moebius syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that prevents her from forming facial expressions and requires surgery. The way Vera sees it, if Rivera's concern for his daughter was genuine, he'd have given the Ecuadorian a shot at pocketing some money to put toward her operation, even if it meant "Chito" would get his teeth bashed in.
"If he truly cared about my daughter, he would fight, bully me, beat me, and I still cash a check for the fight," said Vera.