Marvin Vettori has finally said his piece about Joaquin Buckley, and the Italian middleweight contender kept the door open for peace while making it clear he won’t stand still if things get physical. In a statement carried by Sherdog on Tuesday, Vettori addressed their leaked sparring dispute head-on. He shrugged off the encounter itself and put the escalation on Buckley’s shoulders.
Vettori’s account is rough around the edges, in the way of a man typing fast and annoyed. He said he “never even saw that encounter as anything,” and explained that when a fighter has a bout coming up, “sometimes people prepare for ortho and I’m southpaw so its was no problem on my end.” Then the tone shifted. He accused Buckley of seeing “anything as a reason to start some shit or some racial shit,” and pointed out that it was Buckley who said he’d do something if the two ran into each other.
The line that will travel is the last one. “I honestly got no problem with buckley but I mean if you try something when you see me I’m probably surely gonna respond eventually,” Vettori said.
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Vettori’s online habits had already drawn some ribbing before the statement landed. The account @DovySimuMMA posted on Saturday that Vettori “needs to put his phone down.”
Buckley widens the fight
Buckley, meanwhile, has spent the past few days picking fights with half the roster over a different subject entirely: fighters who use the N-word. In a clip shared by Championship Rounds on Sunday, he challenged Dustin Poirier, Max Holloway, Sean Strickland, Josh Hokit and Alexander Volkov to say it somewhere it would carry real consequences. “Get in the DJ booth, no security, and shout out ‘WHAT’S UP MY NI**A’… I’ll shut the f*ck up,” Buckley said.
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Strickland, predictably, did not take the bait quietly. On Saturday he had already posted on X, “Who is more racist.. Me or Joaquin Buckley?” and an Instagram post from him, shared by @DovySimuMMA, read “Joaquin Buckley bro you better get these ni$$as!!!” After Buckley’s club challenge, Strickland called him a black Karen and fired back with a non sequitur about money, betting that Buckley wouldn’t take his tax returns to the IRS.
Buckley’s next response, shared by Championship Rounds early Tuesday, dropped any pretense of diplomacy. He cursed out Poirier, Strickland and Hokit by name, then extended the same profane sentiment to anyone who felt some type of way about them, and to the listener for good measure.
None of the sources point to a booked fight between Vettori and Buckley, and nothing indicates the UFC is building toward one. For now this lives on phones, in clips and quote posts.
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My take: Vettori’s statement reads like a guy who’d rather this go away. He frames the sparring session as ordinary camp business, a southpaw helping someone prepare for an orthodox look, which happens in every serious gym on the planet every week. Buckley has a real point buried in his campaign about the slur, and plenty of people in the sport have said the same thing more quietly. But cursing out everyone in earshot turns a fair argument into noise, and it makes Vettori, of all people, sound like the calm one in the room. Somebody at a fight week hotel is going to have to keep these two on separate elevators.
