Following the UFC 133 incident, Franklin said he sat down with UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta to discuss the fallout from the situation and his feelings on White's comments.
"That feeling of family, it's dissipated a little bit," Franklin said. "It's not the same as it used to be when I first starting fighting for the UFC, and I basically told Lorenzo that. I said, 'Hey, I feel like sometimes you guys don't really have my back,' and he told me that they'd been really busy with the FOX deal and all that kind of stuff."
After that conversation, Franklin said, he and the UFC "were all on the same page," and there was even talk of a bout with Tito Ortiz in November, which Franklin said he was "definitely open to and interested in."
Unfortunately, his shoulder surgery scuttled those hopes, leaving him focused only on rehab and getting back to fighting shape for now. As for the weight class he'll compete in and the opponent he might face when he returns, Franklin said he's content to leave that up to the UFC.
"If the UFC said something to me about fighting at middleweight again, I'd be great with that," he said, though he clarified that he's not about to request anything specific along those lines. "...If they're not going to let me work toward a title, in the meantime as long as I can just work at putting on exciting fights and that stuff, then I'm good with doing that."
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