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Junior dos Santos had a lot to discuss five days removed from a tough knockout loss to Ciryl Gane at UFC 256.
To say the former UFC heavyweight champion is facing the most difficult stretch of his professional career is an understatement, as “Cigano” carries four consecutive stoppage defeats in just 18 months. This one in particular hurt bad as he sees it as an unfair result.
In a 25-minute conversation with MMA Fighting on Thursday, his first interview after UFC 256, dos Santos discussed the elbow that took him down, a strike deemed legal by referee Jerin Valel, the possibility of being cut by the promotion, whether or not the 36-year-old veteran has considered retirement, and much more.
The fight obviously didn’t go as you expected. What went wrong against Ciryl Gane?
Well, I guess maybe I’m staying more apathetic because of the weight of the responsibility for this negative moment in my career. I’m not attacking or being as aggressive as I should be, so maybe… I didn’t attack, I wasn’t aggressive early as I planned on being.
Did you follow the strategy you had set for this fight or did it take a detour? What was your plan for this fight?
It took a detour. I was supposed to fight more on the inside, but didn’t exactly follow the plan. I should have closed the distance and grappled, too, but fought in a longer distance mostly because of our movement, especially his.
Did he surprise you in anything he did, or was the loss due to you not following your strategy and being “apathetic?”
I think it was more of my mistake. [He] was quite the opposite, actually, because I was expecting… Not taking anything away from him, but I was expecting, based on his size and everything people talked about him, hyping him up, I was expecting heavy strikes, but didn’t feel none of that. I felt it was completely normal, like any other heavyweight. Unfortunately, I paid for my mistakes one more time. Not exactly a mistake, but not exactly following the plan.
The way things happened in the end of the fight gets me reflecting a lot, I can’t quite accept it. Not just the way it was, but mainly because of people in the business have said about that. Not that I couldn’t get knocked out, none of that. Quite the opposite, I’ve always accepted my defeats with humbleness. If someone is better than me, there’s nothing I can do, especially in this division, where the hand lands and the person goes down. But the situation there, the way it was, and everybody thinking that’s ok… By everybody I mean so-called MMA specialists considering it a legal strike. To me, that’s very frustrating.
People that consider it a legal strike argue he was already throwing the strike when you turned around, and also that it didn’t exactly land to the back of the head, it also hit on the side. Don’t you think so?
That’s not the only point, that was the athletic commission’s argument. They said it also connected to the ear so it’s valid, but it was his forearm, closer to the hand, that hit my ear, but the elbow connected exactly to the back to my head. I went out for a few seconds and when I came back it already was too late. I felt that pain in the head and looked to the big screen, where I saw the replay of the movement and it landing exactly to the back to the head.
People saying I turned my head, to me, is absurd. I already was sideways, he was kind of holding me in that position for about 10 seconds, so when he threw the elbow—I don’t think it was intentional, he didn’t mean to land the elbow to the back of my head, I don’t think that, but it doesn’t make it legal. “Oh, I turned my head and whatever.” That doesn’t make the strike not illegal.
To say the former UFC heavyweight champion is facing the most difficult stretch of his professional career is an understatement, as “Cigano” carries four consecutive stoppage defeats in just 18 months. This one in particular hurt bad as he sees it as an unfair result.
In a 25-minute conversation with MMA Fighting on Thursday, his first interview after UFC 256, dos Santos discussed the elbow that took him down, a strike deemed legal by referee Jerin Valel, the possibility of being cut by the promotion, whether or not the 36-year-old veteran has considered retirement, and much more.
The fight obviously didn’t go as you expected. What went wrong against Ciryl Gane?
Well, I guess maybe I’m staying more apathetic because of the weight of the responsibility for this negative moment in my career. I’m not attacking or being as aggressive as I should be, so maybe… I didn’t attack, I wasn’t aggressive early as I planned on being.
Did you follow the strategy you had set for this fight or did it take a detour? What was your plan for this fight?
It took a detour. I was supposed to fight more on the inside, but didn’t exactly follow the plan. I should have closed the distance and grappled, too, but fought in a longer distance mostly because of our movement, especially his.
Did he surprise you in anything he did, or was the loss due to you not following your strategy and being “apathetic?”
I think it was more of my mistake. [He] was quite the opposite, actually, because I was expecting… Not taking anything away from him, but I was expecting, based on his size and everything people talked about him, hyping him up, I was expecting heavy strikes, but didn’t feel none of that. I felt it was completely normal, like any other heavyweight. Unfortunately, I paid for my mistakes one more time. Not exactly a mistake, but not exactly following the plan.
The way things happened in the end of the fight gets me reflecting a lot, I can’t quite accept it. Not just the way it was, but mainly because of people in the business have said about that. Not that I couldn’t get knocked out, none of that. Quite the opposite, I’ve always accepted my defeats with humbleness. If someone is better than me, there’s nothing I can do, especially in this division, where the hand lands and the person goes down. But the situation there, the way it was, and everybody thinking that’s ok… By everybody I mean so-called MMA specialists considering it a legal strike. To me, that’s very frustrating.
People that consider it a legal strike argue he was already throwing the strike when you turned around, and also that it didn’t exactly land to the back of the head, it also hit on the side. Don’t you think so?
That’s not the only point, that was the athletic commission’s argument. They said it also connected to the ear so it’s valid, but it was his forearm, closer to the hand, that hit my ear, but the elbow connected exactly to the back to my head. I went out for a few seconds and when I came back it already was too late. I felt that pain in the head and looked to the big screen, where I saw the replay of the movement and it landing exactly to the back to the head.
People saying I turned my head, to me, is absurd. I already was sideways, he was kind of holding me in that position for about 10 seconds, so when he threw the elbow—I don’t think it was intentional, he didn’t mean to land the elbow to the back of my head, I don’t think that, but it doesn’t make it legal. “Oh, I turned my head and whatever.” That doesn’t make the strike not illegal.
