Urijah Faber claims Sage Northcutt’s fight against Shinya Aoki fell through due to a juxtaposition of miscommunications and divine messages.
Northcutt was scheduled to make his long-awaited return to combat sports against the Japanese grappling legend at ONE Championship 165 on Jan. 28. However, it was announced midway through the card that Northcutt pulled out because his coaches didn’t have working visas in Japan. Northcutt was replaced by UFC veteran John Lineker, who was submitted 3:00 into the first round by Aoki.
Because Lineker weighed in ahead of the card for no apparent reason, there was speculation that the visa issue didn’t reveal the whole narrative. Faber has now revealed that the cancellation of the fight was in the works the night before the event.
“There’s a lot of misinterpretation there,” Faber told MiddleEasy. “I think if you watch [ONE CEO Chatri Sityodtong’s] interview, he kind of said the way it was: There was a last-minute hiccup in the visas of Fabio Prado and Mr. Mark Northcutt, Sage’s dad.
“So, 10:30 [p.m.] in Japan, we learned that they were not gonna be able to be in the corner. I got a message around 11:30 from Mark that Sage was not gonna fight, and I talked to him face-to-face and kinda got the lowdown on what was going on. There was a lot of miscommunication and things like that. I was cleared to corner, I was cleared to be in the corner if Sage did wanna fight.
“I didn’t actually get to talk to Sage face-to-face until about [1 p.m.] on fight day. And the general consensus was that he did not feel comfortable fighting with a couple of different things that had happened. He is a very big man of faith, he has a relationship with God, and the holy spirit and felt like things weren’t adding up for him and he didn’t feel like fighting.
“I said ‘Are you sure?’ There are a lot more details on the nuts and bolts of the conversations that we had leading up to that happening, and they felt like they were misled and expected to go in there last minute.”
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