Marvin Vettori appeared to be soundly beaten by Israel Adesanya at UFC 263 on Saturday night, but ‘The Italian Dream’ still disagrees with all three judges scoring it 50-45 in his opponent’s favor.
“I think I did a lot of good things,” Vettori told BT Sport. “I was having a lot of success with the boxing exchanges. Story of this fight was the leg kick, I guess. I went back and I talked to my coaches, I think the 50-45 was definitely not the right decision but it is what is.
“At the end of the day, I’m 27 years old. I’m going to go back to the hotel, I’m going to go and run. I’m going to go and run and do like a five-mile run. I didn’t even take a hot shower because I feel like I don’t deserve it. That’s how crazy I am. I’m going to go back and work and get ready for the next fight.”
After the result had been announced the two fighters were seeing having a brief conversation, which clearly wasn’t an exchange of pleasantries since Adesanya rolled his eyes as he moved away, and Vettori has now admitted he was telling ‘The last Stylebender’ that he thought he should have won.
“Right after the fight, I thought I won,” Vettori said. “I thought I won and he’s like ‘no, you didn’t win.’ He was like ‘at the end of the day, respect, we don’t like each other but respect’ and I said you know what, we share the octagon for eight rounds now, for 40 minutes basically. At the end of the day, you’ve got to give some props.”
Vettori did also offer up a few positives on what he felt Adesanya had done well with during the fight.
“He’s really slippery. He has his own game, his own way of staying on the ground. He does what he does and he’s game in his own way. He might not be offensive or anything but defensively he’s pretty good.
“With that being said, I had all the cards to beat him but I didn’t. I said coming in I would leave no doubt and even if I would have won, I would have left doubts and at the end of the day, I didn’t do enough.”
It seems that Vettori is, at least for the time being, now ready to move on to a different opponent, and he’s suggested former title challenger Paulo Costa as the man he’d like to fight next.
“To be honest, I’d like to really destroy this drunk guy that can’t even stay off drinking,” Vettori said of Costa. “It’s ‘Borrachinha’ … I’d definitely like to smack this guy.
“I am as game as they come. You can count on me, when there’s a fight and there’s a date, I’ll show up. We’ll see.”
While that match-up would make sense, it might be easier said than done to put together given that Costa is currently in a pay dispute with the UFC that’s led to him refusing to fight.
