After a good night of fights at ‘UFC On FX 4’ that was marred by a disappointing main event, UFC President Dana White gave his reaction to some of the big talking points emerging from it in his post-fight interview with Fuel TV’s Ariel Helwani.
Read the keynotes from their conversation below and scroll down to watch the video in it’s entirety.
—
– Needless to say Dana put Clay Guida on blast for his bizarre performance. Here’s a few quotes to give you an idea of his mood…
“You don’t want to fight by running…ever.”
“Some goof put in his head that running around in circles might win him the fight, and they were dead wrong.”
“How they had that fight that close…? It was a blowout by Gray Maynard.”
– White believes it’s not so much Guida that’s too blame as one of his coaches that gave him a poor gameplan that stunted his naturally aggressive, in-your-face fighting style.
– White praises referee Dan Miragliotta for threatening to take a point from Guida in the final round for not engaging, but he also feels he should have done so as early as the second round of the fight.
– White doesn’t know how to assess Maynard’s assessment given that it wasn’t really a fight. He gives him respect for continually trying to bring the fight to Guida though, and shakes his head in bemusement that he had to literally run after him in order to land a strike.
– He somewhat sheepishly admits that he, “would have bet anything that this was going to be an exciting fight” and feels bad for the Atlantic City crowd who had to sit through it.
– White doesn’t feel featherweight Hatsu Hioki got his comeuppance after he turned down a title fight recently and then ended up losing last night in the prelims. He says there’s nothing wrong with knowing where you are in your career and deciding you’re not ready to fight for the belt. He believes the result proves that he made a good decision.
– The UFC president is adamant that Spencer Fisher won his fight with Sam Stout despite the fact that Stout one convincingly as far as the judges were concerned. He believes that Fisher was beating Stout up on the feet and that the judges put to much value in the takedowns which Stout was doing at the end of each round.
He has no problem with people taking the fight to the mat if they then do something with the advantageous position, but he doesn’t feel that was the case with Stout.
He also praised Fisher who he felt, “looked as good tonight as he ever has.”
– Moving on to tomorrow night’s UFC 147 event White admits that if Wanderlei Silva takes a lot of damage and is knocked out against Rich Franklin then he would sit down with the fighter and suggest that he retires from the sport.
Having said that White says that he loves ‘The Axe-Murderer’ and there’ll be a place for him in the UFC whenever he does eventually retire.
—
