Vitor Belfort will enter the boxing ring for his first professional match since his debut in 2006, but he ruffled some feathers in the Brazilian boxing community with comments he made during a recent media scrum in California.
Belfort, who is preparing to face former boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya on Sept. 11 in Los Angeles, said he qualified to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney as a boxer but “could not go due to a knee injury that I had.” He doubled down with an Instagram post days later with a photo he claimed was from a win he secured in a qualifying bout for the 2000 Olympics alongside the caption, “I could not go [to the 2000 Olympics] because I had hurt my meniscus in training and I had to had surgery in my knee and I miss this opportunity.