Lately, featherweight Shane Brugos has been on a roll in terms of his MMA career.
Coming into the promotion back in 2016, the New York native started off in the promotion hot by getting an impressive win over Tiago Trator at UFC Fight Night Albany, which extended his undefeated record. The featherweight would continue to rack up wins by getting strong victories over Charles Rosa and Godofredo Pepey.
However, Brugos suffered his first real set back when he lost to Calvin Kattar at UFC 220. While the 29-year-old would no longer be undefeated inside of the octagon, Brugos actually learned from his mistakes in the featherweight fight and quickly bounced back with three consecutive wins.
When it was confirmed that the featherweight re-signed with the UFC back in November, the news wasn’t much of a surprise as Burgos has a bright future within the promotion. When the time came to ink a new deal, Burgos actually got some solid offers from several other promotions; however, the featherweight remained with the UFC due to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency:
“It’s a four-fight deal,” Burgos said in his MMA Junkie interview. “I turned down a nice offer from another promotion for even more money just because I wanted to stay in the UFC.
A big thing for me, and I don’t express this too much, but the reason why I want to stay in the UFC – it’s because of USADA. A lot of promotions, their drug testing is too lenient and it’s easy to get away with (things). As much as USADA is a nuisance, it makes it harder for the cheaters to cheat. I know there are guys that are still getting away with it, which sucks. But you’re going to have the least amount of cheaters in the UFC. I truly believe that.”
The decision to remain with the UFC wasn’t a easy one as Burgos does have a family to provide for; however, the pros outweighed the cons, along with a great offer from the promotion:
“It wasn’t a no-brainier,” Burgos said. “I have a family. This is how I provide, how I make a living, so I was tossing and turning thinking about it. There were pros and cons to both, so my wife literally wrote down a pros and cons list and the UFC just made more sense, especially with USADA. Cheaters drive me nuts, so that was a big factor for me. But the UFC made me a great offer, too. I’m making significantly more than before, so I’m happy with the offer still.”
Due to the coronavirus, the fighter doesn’t know when he’ll step back into the octagon; however, Burgos is looking forward to that moment and lists several names that he would like face in the future:
“I want to be done with this contract ASAP – do three fights and renegotiate on the third fight,” he said. “But it’s such a weird time right now with the coronavirus. I don’t know when I’ll be able to fight, so it’s just hard to gauge it. I just don’t know when I’m going to fight.
“I’m just looking at whoever is ahead of me, and most of them are booked. You have a couple: You have (Calvin) Kattar and (Jeremy) Stephens fighting on April 18. Me and Kattar had a great fight together already. Me and Stephens would be a lot of fun, too. You have Yair (Rodriguez) and Zabit (Magomedsharipov) – those would be fun fights. You have (Brian) Ortega. Honestly, any of those matchups would be firefights.”