White: Roy Nelson's UFC career on hold until outside contract issues resolved

[Guest baseball25]

OBERHAUSEN, Germany – There's a reason heavyweight contender Roy Nelson will not appear at UFC 125, and it's not because the UFC is unable to find him a new opponent.

UFC president Dana White today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that Nelson (15-5 MMA, 2-1 UFC) is currently contractually bound to another fight promotion.

As such, he won't be seen inside the octagon until he is in the clear from his previous employer.

Following Saturday night's UFC 122 event in Oberhausen, Germany, White declined to specifically name the fight promotion, but sources close to "Big Country" confirmed that former boxing great Roy Jones Jr.'s Square Ring Promotions claims to have Nelson tied down. 

Nelson headlined a MMA/boxing hybrid card Jones Jr. promoted in March 2009 entitled "March Badness" and was defeated by former UFC heavyweight contender Jeff Monson via unanimous decision. According to the Florida State Boxing Commission, Nelson earned $30,000 for his efforts.

A few months after the loss to Monson, Nelson joined the cast of "The Ultimate Fighter 10" and bested four opponents to win the reality show tournament. The heavyweight then knocked out rising prospect Stefan Struve in March but fell short in an August title eliminator bout against the red-hot Junior Dos Santos.

Nelson was scheduled to meet one-time contender Shane Carwin in the co-main event of UFC 125, which is slated for Jan. 1 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, but Carwin this past month withdrew from the fight after suffering a back injury in training.

Speculation ran rampant about Nelson's replacement; an initial rumor stated Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic requested to step into Carwin's shoes. Another said Brock Lesnar asked for the fight in the weeks following his loss to Cain Velasquez at UFC 121. (White shot down the Lesnar rumor earlier this week at a Q&A event for UFC Fight Club fans in support of UFC 122.)

Then Nelson was removed from the event altogether.

"The thing is nobody wants to fight a fat guy like me," Nelson subsequently told Sherdog.com. "'Cro Cop' is a legend in this sport, and I would've loved to have fought him. I'd like to fight [Antonio Rodrigo] Nogueira for the same reason. I'd love to fight [Alistair] Overeem, Brock Lesnar or (professional wrestler) 'The Undertaker'.

"[UFC president] Dana White asks people, 'So, you want to be a [expletive] fighter?' I love to fight. I'm one of those guys."

That's not the whole story, White said.

"These guys go out and sign with these rinky-dink little promotion companies and sign these bad contracts, and let's just say Roy Nelson is involved in a bad contract right now that he had before," White said. "There's a couple of different organizations out there that do it."

While White was tight-lipped about the promotion, he did hint that it may be a long time before Nelson frees himself.

"There's organizations that are locking these guys up to the old-school boxing contracts," White said. "The contracts that King and those guys were doing back in the 60s, 70s and 80s where they have options on top of their options – so your contract never ends with these guys.

"These are the kinds of contracts that some of these guys are signing in these other organizations out there that some of these MMA websites go, 'Oh, stick up for these guys, they're the small guys.' The small guys are the guys that are really [expletive] the fighters."

Nelson could not be reached for comment at the time of this writing, though he's posted a variety of cryptic messages on his Twitter account.

"Trying to do some non-MMA related work just in case this fighting stuff doesn't work out," he wrote on Nov. 12.

"I need to start the James [Toney] thing," Nelson wrote later that day. "Just pick fights, and then get paid then have the IRS look into my independent contract status."

[HoopInsider_Cooper]

[font=Courier]hope they get this ressolved. I've learned to like big country.[/font]

[mat]

Odd that he has several UFC fights under his belt before it became a problem