Talking to Patrick McCorry of Cageside Press, Fleury laid out his plans for the coming months, and revealed that he’s already having to tweak his schedule after the man he thought he was going to face, German grappler Frederic Vosgrone, was forced out of his bout with Lucas Alsina at OKTAGON 72 last weekend.
“I’m gutted, because I was really looking forward to (Vosgrone) smashing (Alsina) and me jumping in the cage afterwards and creating that whole thing. We could have really built that,” he said.
“Look, there’s other opportunities out there right now. So the first thing I said to him was, ‘When can you fight?’ He said, maybe in a couple of months, maybe August.”
With Vosgrone out of the picture, at least for now, Fleury said that he’s considering a late-summer matchup against former interim title challenger Alexander Poppeck, with a bout against Vosgrone potentially possible towards the end of the year.
“If (Vosgrone) can fight in August, and I can get maybe a fight against (Alexander) Poppeck pretty quickly, and then I could do (the Vosgrone fight) at the end of the year, and then possibly middleweight next year,” he explained.
“There’s a lot of moving parts right now. So, we’ll see.”
After conquering OKTAGON’s light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, the big Irishman is also eyeing a third championship belt, and sees a move down to middleweight to face newly-crowned interim champion Makhmud Muradov as a fight that would excite him.
“That’s an amazing fight,” he said, before Muradov defeated Patrik Kincl to capture the interim belt.
“Honestly, that’s a fight that I’m like, ‘Oh, I have to rise to the challenge. That’s my Everest. Coming down to be the three-division champion. Right now, that’s what gets me up in the morning. I’m like, ‘Whoa! Let’s go!’
“He’s a tough fight. He’s a good guy. He’s 4-1 in the UFC, man. So the guy’s legit, and beating a guy who’s that legit makes me proud. I want to be proud of myself when I finish all of this. That’s a fight that would make me very proud of myself.”
