Shane Burgos fought out his UFC contract with a win over Charles Jourdain at UFC Long Island.
Following his split decision win over Charles Jourdain on the recent UFC Long Island card in his home state of New York, featherweight veteran Shane Burgos told UFC commentator Daniel Cormier, “That was the last fight on my deal. My manager over there, Malki (Kawa of First Round Management), secure me another deal. Let’s get back in the UFC.”
According to Burgos, it was not the first time he fought out his UFC deal.
“I did it for my last deal when I went into the Makwan (Amirkhani) fight,” Burgos said on The MMA Hour. “Fighting Makwan (in 2019) that was the last fight on my deal. I feel like you just double down on yourself, and it shows a level of confidence. It puts a ton of pressure on you, 100 percent, because you don’t want to go out on a loss – you don’t have any leveraging power over anything, and it’s just a bad look, for sure. But I don’t let that kind of pressure get to me. The pressure more so was on me to get a finish.”
Burgos did not finish Jourdain, but he got a stoppage (TKO) over Amirkhani. A few months after his win over Amirkhani, Burgos announced he had inked a four-fight deal to stay with the UFC. Burgos told MMA Junkie at the time he had, “turned down a nice offer from another promotion for even more money just because I wanted to stay in the UFC.”
Currently the No. 14 fighter in the official UFC featherweight rankings, Burgos was happy that he tested the waters in 2019. With that experience, the 31-year-old didn’t seem to second guess letting his contract expire in July.
“I love being in the UFC,” Burgos said. “I love being a UFC fighter. But it doesn’t make sense for me to not ‘test the waters,’ but we’ll see what they come back with. It would be negligent of me and disrespectful to my family to not even hear other numbers, and I would love to hear some other numbers.
“I’m not going to be sitting back for four or five months waiting for a deal, but yeah, you want to throw some numbers at me, I’m definitely open to listen.”
Burgos finished out his current four-fight deal with a 2-2 record. He lost his first two fights on the deal (but the UFC rewarded both efforts with Fight of the Night bonuses) before closing out the contract with decision wins over Billy Quarantillo and Jourdain.
The first fight of his most recent contract paid Burgos a disclosed $75,000 in defeat.