{"id":38565,"date":"2026-05-31T17:55:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T17:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sherdog.com\/news\/news\/Kevin-Lee-believes-political-speech-ruined-relationship-with-UFC-201381"},"modified":"2026-05-31T17:55:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T17:55:26","slug":"kevin-lee-believes-political-speech-ruined-relationship-with-ufc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/kevin-lee-believes-political-speech-ruined-relationship-with-ufc\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Lee believes political speech ruined relationship with UFC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Kevin
\nLee<\/a> believes a political speech he gave in 2019 changed his MMA
\ncareer. <\/p>\n

Lee delivered a speech campaigning for presidential candidate
\nBernie Sanders, who is a longtime political rival of President
\nDonald Trump. Lee was coming off a bonus-winning stoppage over
\nGregor
\nGillespie<\/a> when Sanders\u2019 team contacted him. Lee had no monetary
\nincentive to campaign for Sanders, who he thought would win the
\nelection in 2020.<\/p>\n

\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cMy career really started going south after that Gregor fight,\u201d Lee
\nrecently told Eric Cerminara. \u201cBecause I decided to get political,
\nshoutout to Bernie Sanders. And then I went and I spoke for Bernie
\nSanders at this convention or something. His people reached out to
\nme, they were like, \u2018Hey, you want to do a little speech?\u2019 I was
\nlike, \u2018Sure.\u2019 No money, I just did it \u2013 felt like it was cool, I
\nthought he would be president.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee believes his relationship with the UFC was ruined due to his
\nspeech supporting Sanders. Lee was then booked to headline a UFC
\nFight Night against Charles
\nOliveira<\/a> in Brasilia, Brazil, right as the COVID-19 pandemic
\nstarted. Lee claims he was made to fly to Brazil for one day to
\nfulfill media obligations just two weeks before the fight. \u201cMotown
\nPhenom\u201d claims he wasn\u2019t given food, and there was no one to braid
\nhis hair. Considering the UFC\u2019s growing alliance with Trump, Lee
\nknows that he made a mistake by supporting Sanders. Lee claims he
\neven ignored Trump, who wanted to meet him backstage after a
\nfight.<\/p>\n

Turning Point<\/h2>\n

\u201cFrom there I felt our relationship turned,\u201d Lee said. \u201cStopped
\ngetting the same calls, started getting the wrong calls. F\u2014-ing
\nfighting Charles, started the pandemic in Brazil. Two weeks before
\nthat fight, they flew me down there for one day, a media day. Spent
\nmore time in the air than I did on the ground. Two weeks before the
\nfight, sounds like an excuse. F\u2014ing terrible, they didn\u2019t give me
\nno food, they didn\u2019t even have somebody to braid my hair. The whole
\nrelationship changed after doing that Bernie Sanders thing. Seeing
\nhow much they\u2019re in with Trump now, I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh yeah, alright, I
\nf\u2014ed up.\u2019 After that fight, Trump wanted to meet me backstage and I
\nf\u2014-ing walked out. Which is crazy, because I voted for Trump the
\nsecond time.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lee (20-9) missed weight by 2.5 pounds for the fight against
\nOliveira and lost via submission. The former interim lightweight
\nchallenger just fought once more in the UFC before being released
\nby the promotion. After a fight on the regional circuit, Lee
\nreturned to the UFC for a one-off outing, where he suffered another
\nsubmission loss against Rinat Fakkretdinov. While Lee announced his
\nretirement from MMA in 2023, he returned to competition in 2024,
\npicking up a win on the regional circuit before suffering a loss
\nagainst Gadzhi
\nRabadanov<\/a> at PFL. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
<\/blockquote>\n

<\/center> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Lee believes a political speech he gave in 2019 changed his MMA career.  Lee delivered a speech campaigning for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is a longtime political rival of President Donald Trump. Lee was coming off a bonus-winning stoppage over Gregor Gillespie when Sanders\u2019 team contacted him. Lee had no monetary incentive to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}