Bruno Silva suffered one of the most bizarre losses in the history of the UFC on Saturday night when Chris Weidman put him down in the third round with what replays clearly showed was an accidental double eye-poke combo, yet the former middleweight champion somehow still walked away victorious.
Silva was poked in the eye no less than four times in total over the course of the fight, and while Weidman has to shoulder some of the blame for that, Silva thinks that referee Gary Copeland has a lot to answer for.
“I thought the referee was stopping it because of my eye, but then I saw [Weidman] celebrating,” Silva recalled in an interview for MMAFighting. “I was like, ‘No f****** way this m*********** knocked me out. I was never knocked out in my career. I went back up so angry, telling the referee to look at the big screen. I wanted to beat him up, but I knew that would f*** my career. I had to control myself there.”
“The referee was bizarre,” Silva added later. “He f***** up, and then f***** up on top of that. The least they could do is a no-contest. No way. He put his finger inside my eye.”
That’s not how things worked out however, with the fight initially being declared a TKO victory, before later that night being amended by the commission to a technical decision win for Weidman instead (30-27 x3).
“I went to the medicals backstage and my cornerman said they had changed the result and I felt relieved because there was no knockout. I thought they were going to rule it a no-contest, but then he said it was a unanimous win. I didn’t understand it. He poked me in the eye in the second round, poked me in the third, and it’s still an unanimous decision win for him?”
Referee blunders aside, Silva feels that Weidman’s willingness to fight with his fingers extended was a major issue that shouldn’t have gone unpunished.
“Chris Weidman acted in bad faith,” Silva said. “It’s said [by the referee] at the locker room that you can’t fight with your fingers pointing straight, it should be either up or with your hands closed. He spent the entire fight with his fingers pointing at my face, and still celebrated as if he had knocked me out.”
And needless to say Silva was none-to-happy when he heard Weidman stating in his post-fight interview that he should have kept fighting rather than dropping to the mat after the double eye-poke that led to the fight ending.
“What did he want me to do, to smile at his face?” Silva exclaimed. “He put his finger inside my eye. It was my eye, not his. To be told off by the guy that is in the wrong is unbelievable, right?”
As such, Silva now has a score to settle with Weidman, though he doesn’t think he’ll will agree to a rematch.
“I never liked Chris Weidman because of how he handled Anderson Silva’s leg break, but I always try to see it as a professional,” Silva said. “I didn’t know him personally. We see each other a day before the weigh-ins and I wasn’t going to talk to him, but he came to me and shook my hand, wished me good luck. There was no animosity during the fight, we were there to fight, and I was angry at the referee when the fight was over.
“But when I got to the hotel and watched the fight, f***, he was very disloyal. He knows what he did, but being a man is at risk of extinction. No way he would say he’s wrong, that we could do a rematch. He won’t do that. I don’t even expect that. Only men would do that, people with character. I won’t stay here disrespecting him either but when we fight again, it’s going to be different. There will be no loyalty anymore.”
