Joaquin Buckley created a lot of buzz adding Detroit Urban Survival Training founder Commander Dale Brown to his corner ahead of Saturday’s fight with Abdul Razak Alhassan.
That was the exact plan.
In the end, Buckley defeated Alhassan via split decision in a fight that didn’t go the way most expected in the main card opener at UFC Vegas 48.
Buckley explains why he made the viral star part of his team.
” We just began brainstorming. What if this man was there to help us? What type of impact would that make? After that, history was made on Feb. 19,” Buckley said on The MMA Hour.
” When everything began to explode the way it did, my friend reached out and said, “Hey, would that be cool?” He replied, “Yeah. I think we will pretty much blow the internet up,” which we did. The whole thing went insane.
“He was down from the get go,” Buckley continued. “Shout out to Dale Brown. He’s a cool dude, he gets a lot of negativity about the things that he’s doing but he’s legit in the self defense and security game [for] like 26 years. His military experience as a paratrooper means he understands what he is talking about. He has been playing for about a minute.”
Buckley worked previously in Detroit with Brown and had posted video that attracted a lot attention. A friendship and mutual respect grew between the two individuals in the subsequent months.
While other UFC fighters might have questions about Brown’s strategies, Buckley challenges them to discover for themselves.
“His gym is open for anyone that wants to come in,” Buckley explained. “He doesn’t turn away anybody. There’s a lot of fighters talking about how they want to beat him up, they want to test these tactics. All of you can see him. Just go down there. You have to be able to afford to go to Detroit. Can’t go in there for free.
” These [moves] can be used on the streets. Whatever it takes, whatever you got to do to get yourself out of a certain situation — eye gouge, elbows, joint manipulation — those things will work in an actual fight, definitely when you’re talking about someone who has never trained in combat.”
After suffering a knockout loss to Alessio Di Cherico in January 2021, Buckley has bounced back with consecutive victories, including a third-round TKO win over Antonio Arroyo at September’s UFC Vegas 37 event.
After the win, Buckley stated that he did not feel the fight between Alhassan and him was being promoted in the right way. “New Mansa” admits putting Brown in his corner was to help elevate the promotion of the bout more than anything, and while Brown stayed silent in the corner between rounds, Buckley said he did offer some words of wisdom ahead of the bout.
“He was just trying to draw attention, but did offer some valuable advice.” Buckley stated. “It was more mental, telling me I had more commitment than the fighter that is fighting me, that I put it more work, and that what he was trying to take away from [me] is [my] life. ‘He doesn’t want to just take this win, he wants to take your life away from you. The way that you’re trying to build your future, he’s trying to remove that and re-write history. Forget all that. We worked too hard for all of that.'”
