Vanderford details the circumstances surrounding Veretennikov’s post-fight shove and the crazy journey he took to end up on the UFC Seattle card at all.
Austin Vanderford, sometimes known as Mr. Paige VanZant, made his successful UFC debut on Saturday night at UFC Seattle with a dominant TKO win over Nikolay Veretennikov in the second round of their prelim fight (highlights here). Veretennikov didn’t manage to do much against the Bellator veteran, other than give Vanderford a shove following the conclusion of the fight.
UFC CEO Dana White shrugged off the post-fight hostilities, so now fighters have free shoves in addition to free speech. Vanderford didn’t seem too bothered by the incident either.
“Funny enough, I had dropped the nickname ‘The Gentleman’ for this fight,” he said at the UFC Seattle post-fight press conference. “And I guess now there’s a picture of me with the double birds up.”
“But yeah, it was kinda weird,” Vanderford added. “He came up, I thought he was coming up to say good fight. I didn’t really understand. He was never gonna get out of that position he was in unless time ran out or the ref stopped it. I had a good grip on him, and he got saved. He was gonna get hurt even worse. I was landing some shots and I was gonna go in for a hard one.”
“For me, no hard feelings. I know the sacrifices and what we do to go out there and to perform. And I know the dreams and aspirations we all have. So I feel for the guy. But yeah, I mean, you go out there and you get dominated and then throw a fit like that? You probably don’t deserve to be here.”
If Vanderford sounds like he’s got a heightened concept of what it takes to be a UFC fighter these days, it’s because of the long road he’s been on to get into the Octagon. “The Gentleman” was on season two of Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018, finishing his fight with a second round submission. But for some reason that wasn’t enough to get a contract from White.
Bellator stepped in and picked him up, leading to a 5-2 run in that promotion. A badly broken hand forced Vanderford out of action for two years, but he returned strong in October 2024 with a first round TKO in LFA. That got him back on the radar of UFC matchmakers, who called him when UFC Seattle started imploding with last minute fight cancellations.
Nikolay Veretennikov shoving Austin Vanderford after the ref had to save him from getting KO’d is not a good look #UFCSeattle pic.twitter.com/QZdgZrLAYM
— FULL SEND MMA (@full_send_mma) February 23, 2025
“This was the craziest fight week I’ve probably ever had,” Vanderford said. “I got a call last Saturday, a week from today, saying someone had fallen off the card and and that if I could make weight, it was my opportunity. Of course, you get that call, this is what I’ve been dreaming of. And I said yes immediately. Didn’t get a contract Sunday, never got anything Monday until Monday night.”
“Got a call saying that opponent fell through and they had a new guy,” he continued. “That was like 5PM eastern time on Monday night. By 9PM, I was getting my weight down. Got another call saying that guy wasn’t gonna make it. So I went to bed this past Monday night thinking I wasn’t gonna be on the card. We had flights at 7AM Tuesday morning. We had to cancel. We rebooked it for later on the evening Tuesday, and thank God that, I got another call saying that this guy can make it at a catch weight, and I was like, ‘Let’s go.’ So, it was a whirlwind for sure.”
Vanderford is looking to make up for lost time in the UFC by competing as much as he can.
“I wanna be really active this year and hopefully get back in a month, two months, whatever,” he said. “They got a card in Miami, it’d be cool to sneak on that … First, we gotta make a little pit stop in Vegas for Paige to slap someone up, and then we’ll both be back to work.”