Leslie Smith says UFC has released her, criticizes Aspen Ladd for UFC Atlantic City weigh-in miss

After turning down a fight with Aspen Ladd at UFC Fight Night 128, Leslie Smith said she’s been paid her full show and win purses – a sum totalling $62,000 – for the ill-fated bout.

Also forthcoming for Smith: an “unprecedented” goodbye from the UFC.

Smith, a nine-year MMA veteran, estimated she’s now a free agent after the promotion declined her counter-offer for a new contract.

“They said they had no interest in extending my contract at this time, and instead, they offered me my show and win money,” Smith today told MMAjunkie Radio. “So they said they’ll just pay me off, and since they’re giving me the win bonus, it counts as the last fight on my contract. So, I guess that would mean I’m a free agent now.”

MMAjunkie was unable to immediately verify whether Smith is officially a free agent; multiple requests for comment from the UFC went unreturned. Typically, the fulfillment of a fighter’s contract triggers an exclusive negotiating period, followed by a matching period in which the fighter may entertain offers from other promoters, and the UFC can match to retain the fighter.

Smith (10-7-1 MMA, 4-3 UFC), 35, hoped to leverage Ladd’s (6-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) weight miss into a new deal, which she said was a two-fight contract that paid her a flat $100,000 per fight. But the promotion was “eager” to release her, she said, when she declined to fight Ladd, who came in almost two pounds over the allowed 136-pound limit for the women’s bantamweight bout, which was scheduled for the UFC Fight Pass-streamed portion of Saturday’s card at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J.

Smith indicated security was initially more important than a fight with Ladd. Given her outspoken role in Project Spearhead, which seeks to organize fighters into a collective bargaining unit, she wanted to ensure she would remain in the UFC fold.

“I figured that was one of the best ways to get another contract to keep on fighting,” she said.

Despite being rebuffed by the UFC, she contemplated taking the fight with Ladd anyway. But ultimately, she chose to stick to her principles.

“That was really hard, because my whole thing, what some people would say I’ve probably sacrificed my UFC career for, is Project Spearhead, and one of the major tenets of that is that fighters should not be fighting for free,”Smith said. “They should get paid what they’re worth. And since I had the chance to get the money and not fight, then I would have been fighting for free. It turned into a really big moral issue for me as opposed to wanting to take the fight.”

Smith claims Ladd scratched herself from the fight in a “tactical manner” when she requested a doctor at the event’s early weigh-ins and then offered information she knew would prevent her from getting medically cleared to fight.

Ladd indicated to MMAjunkie that her menstrual cycle was a source of her weight-cutting woes, something Smith knew about during the weigh-ins.

“I’m really disappointed that she would use PMS –menstrual issues – as an excuse,” Smith said. “I can’t even tell you how many women I know, myself included, who have taken out their tampon to go weigh in and still made weight. That isn’t an excuse. It disrespects all the women who have made weight and who don’t make excuses.”

“I’ve been heavy all week,” Ladd told MMAjunkie. “I’ve been doing the best I could, but I dried up last night. Consulted the doctor, and the decision was made to stop cutting at a certain point. I did everything I could to get down. I understand people are going to say what they’re going to say. It happened.”

Ladd apologized for not being able to make weight and declined to engage Smith.

“If you want to talk (expletive) you can, obviously it’s free speech and all that,” Ladd said. “I’m very sorry for what happened. I did the best I could to make it right and keep the fight going. But it takes two to tango, and the other person didn’t want to keep it going, so it happened.”

Smith, however, questions whether Ladd even intended to make weight in the first place and said her opponent had 11 weeks to shed the necessary pounds.

“She made a conscious decision to not cut weight and to do it as early as possible in the whole process,” said Smith, who cited UFC Fight Night 128 headliner Kevin Lee’s rush to make weight by the 11:00 a.m. ET cutoff as a contrast to Ladd’s behavior.

Smith disputes Ladd’s claim of a $5,000 offer in addition to a mandatory 20 percent purse deduction as an incentive to take the fight.

“That never came to me, but even if I had heard about her offer, it would not have changed things,” she said. “Because once she opened that door, it became about more than her. It turned into an opportunity to (extend) my contract with the UFC.”

Smith is disheartened by the UFC’s reaction to the situation. She said the promotion expects fighters to live up their contracts “to the letter.” She simply sought to live up to her contract and hold others to account.

“(The UFC) showed their cards,” Smith said. “They showed that it’s more important to them to do this thing, this unprecedented paying of a win bonus – I don’t think that’s ever happened before – to someone who did not accept a fight because the other person came overweight. So for them to do that, I think indicates how much they don’t really want to have to deal with me anymore.”

Smith holds a 4-2 record with the UFC and is currently on a two-fight winning streak.

For more on UFC Fight Night 128, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.