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Brandon Royval is sitting in a good spot ahead of his UFC Vegas 98 main event tomorrow night (Oct. 12, 2024) opposite undefeated Japanese prospect Tatsuro Taira.
Earlier this year, Royval picked up the best win of his career by decisioning former champion Brandon Moreno, evening their rivalry at one victory a piece. That win shot him up to the No. 1 spot in the Flyweight rankings. Even already having a pair of defeats to the current champion Alexandre Pantoja, “Raw Dog” isn’t terribly far off from another title shot.
Thanks to that leverage, Royval is able to pick and choose his match ups a bit. One prospective match up was recent signee and former RIZIN champion Kai Asakura, the most exciting Flyweight signing in recent years. Royval vs. Asakura would’ve been a great match up, but Royval recently revealed that it would have been too pricy and too risky to fight Asakura in Australia without a pay bump.
“Kai Asakura is sick, and that fight gets me out of bed,” Royval told MMAFighting (via BloodyElbow) “… I want to fight for a f—king belt and it’s like if they want to hype up Kai Asakura then I want to take that [too]. They offered me that fight in Australia. I asked for more money and a bunch of stuff, they said no and then I asked them for one of any of those things, and they said no. I was like ‘All right, well I’m not going to go f—king fight some dude who’s not in the UFC for not much money.’”
For fighters who live outside of Oceania, Australia is a tough sell because the taxes are much higher than US-based athletes are accustomed to paying. Just last week, Sean Strickland offered his own tirade about not wanting to fight Dricus Du Plessis in “The Land Down Under” for similar reasons — it’s expensive!
In classic “Rawdog” fashion, Royval explained his own reasoning by comparing himself to a prostitute.
“Dude, I think of myself as a prostitute for sure; like I’m putting my body on the line for money … But it’s like at this point, I f—king earned my number one spot, I fought my ass off and I’m number one in the world. I’m an expensive prostitute, I’m not a cheap ass prostitute … I’m not just selling my body to anybody who will take it, I got a price on me – I’m not just anybody.”
At the moment, Asakura’s UFC debut has yet to be announced. It’s widely rumored that he’ll face Pantoja for the title, but all that remains to be seen.