Daniel Cormier stands by everything he said during the UFC 274 strawweight title fight.
In the UFC 274, co-main event, Rose Namajunas took on Carla Esparza. This was a rematch from the inaugural UFC strawweight championship fight. The result was one of most disappointing fights I have ever seen. Both women refused to engage in long fights, which left very little to be scored by the judges and less to the commentary team. Jon Anik, Joe Rogan and Cormier spent much of the fight lamenting both the women’s ineptness. Cormier joked that they should book another UFC bout, which Rogan responded “You want this to happen again?”.
“Rose and Carla are going to be pissed off at us, because we had to kind of call it like it is,” Cormier said in the post-fight press conference. “Nobody is immune to criticism, and that fight was to come under fire .”
The fight was undeniably bad. Esparza and Namajunas combined only 67 important strikes in five rounds. Each landing rate was below 30 percentage. Fans booed loudly for portions of the fight and even started doing The Wave, in the absence of anything entertaining to watch. Esparza won the strawweight title by a split decision. Namajunas, of course, strongly disagreed with the result, saying she believed she won the fight but for Cormier, that only drives home the validity of his criticisms.
“Here’s the problem: if you’re Rose Namajunas, you go home and you are really disappointed because you kind of played chance with your championship, because in those first three rounds, I don’t know how anybody judged it,” Cormier said. Listen, Jon Anik, who is literally the smartest person I know, said, “I don’t know how any judge judges it. Tonight that was the only way they could have rated those three rounds and gave them to Carla.”
“It was just a game. I don’t know how the coaches could be so confident with their advice for their athletes. This was an extremely difficult fight to see. Rose was a tough one to watch, and I believe that the first fight, with those takedowns really frozen Rose. She’s been able to give us incredible performances .”
on many occasions.
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