Vettori tells Buckley he holds no grudge but will retaliate if pushed

Marvin Vettori has publicly addressed his simmering dispute with Joaquin Buckley, insisting he harbours no personal animosity towards the UFC welterweight but warning he will respond if provoked.

The conflict stems from two separate flashpoints. Buckley has been publicly calling out fellow UFC fighters — including Dustin Poirier, Josh Hokit, and Max Holloway — over the use of the N-word. Vettori weighed in, arguing that Buckley was unnecessarily injecting racism into situations he deemed minor, which prompted a sharp reaction from Buckley, who goes by the nickname “New Mansa.”

Buckley escalated the exchange by challenging Vettori to a no-rounds sparring session at the UFC Performance Institute and revisiting a previous encounter between the two at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. According to Buckley, he was deep in fight camp when Vettori asked him to spar. After Buckley declined, Vettori reportedly told him to stop being “soft” and later jokingly called him a “b*tch.” Buckley said the incident was one he should have addressed more firmly at the time.

Vettori, however, says the gym exchange barely registered with him. Writing on X, the former UFC middleweight title challenger explained that the mismatch in stances — Vettori is southpaw — made the sparring request a non-issue on his end, and that he never interpreted the moment as a confrontation.

“Honestly I never even saw that encounter as anything,” Vettori wrote. “I got it you have a fight sometimes people prepare for ortho and I’m southpaw so it was no problem on my end. You see anything as a reason to start some sht or some racial sht. You the one that said that you were gonna do something if you see me and I honestly got no problem with Buckley but I mean if you try something when you see me I’m probably surely gonna respond eventually.”

The message is a measured one from Vettori: he is not looking to manufacture a feud, but he is not walking away from one either. Whether Buckley accepts that framing — or presses the issue further — remains to be seen.