Mike Swick talking to Cage Potato:
Speaking of Koscheck, I thought it was kind of odd that he called out Hughes after beating Frank Trigg. You've been trying to get that fight with Hughes for months now.
We knew he wasn't going to take the fight before we called him out. We -- me and Fitch -- actually told Koscheck to do that. Fitch has asked for him before and then I asked for him and the UFC told me I wasn't going to get that fight. So before Koscheck's fight we were talking and we just said, ‘Hey, why don't you try it and see if he'll fight you.'
It almost sounds like you guys don't even want to fight him so much as you just want to keep after him for not taking a fight with one of you. Like it's become a game in itself at this point.
It is. There's no real motivation anymore to fight him. We know he's not going to agree to it. It's just a game now. He won't take a fight with any of us and we're just going to keep continuously calling him out.
Steve Cofield comments:
We've seen one bully confronted, back down this month and now a fun situation is developing between Matt Hughes and the fellas at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose. Does it mean another "retirement" on the way? Probably not. It's doubtful that Hughes will walk away from the sport like Quinton Jackson did because he's getting beating up verbally, but the former welterweight champ needs to save face and challenge one of the three AKA fighters who are calling him out. Josh Koscheck, Jon Fitch and Mike Swick are legit top 10 UFC welterweights and it's getting to the point where they're laughing at Hughes.
The AKA guys get a lot of heat online for being a three man roadblock in the UFC welterweight division because they won't fight each other (presumably that would change if one of them ever managed to win the title). But Matt Hughes has so far evaded much criticism for declining to fight the formidable trio from AKA.