Jorge Masvidal wants a rematch after lackluster main event, “I want to take his head off even more now that he beat me”
The fantasy of Fight Island was short-lived. The storyline that played out leading up to this weekend’s main event was that of a Hollywood movie. The challenger, Jorge Masvidal, stepped in on six days’ notice riding one of the biggest hype trains in recent UFC history to fight the undefeated world champion.
“Gamebred ” carried the hype from 2019 where he consecutively finished Darren Till, Den Askren, and Nate Diaz. His fighting style, toughness, and finishes instantly became the stuff of legend.
The champion, Kamaru Usman, was the undefeated nightmare that no one wanted to fight. After a grueling 25 minutes, the champion did what he needed to do to get the victory. Call it “boring.” Call it “methodical.” Call it a “buzzkill.” The fact of the matter is the champ got the “W.”
It wasn’t a thrilling performance but Usman did what he needed to do in order to stifle the challenger who can knock anyone out in the blink of an eye. Usman used his wrestling to control the fight and never gave Masvidal an opportunity to land the knockout blow. The champ cruised to a unanimous decision win.
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Despite taking the fight on six days’ notice Masvidal did not make any excuses.
“I hate coming up short,” Masvidal said at the UFC 251 post-fight press conference. “I’m not going to make no excuses. He was the better man tonight. There were some areas where I didn’t give him enough credit, and there were some areas I felt with a better training camp I could definitely surpass him. I think I showed a lot of my wrestling on six days’ notice that I’m not too easy to take down and to hold down on the ground.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I tried to fight in spots since I didn’t feel my gas tank was the greatest. He fought in better spots. Right when I’d get loose and open up, he was able to clinch me up and take it back into his world. So I’m not going to take anything away from him. He won fair and square. I’ll do whatever it takes to get back in front of that man and compete again and get my hand raised.”
“The weight cut was tough like everybody knows,” Masvidal said. “I had a little bit of weight to cut but I’m not going to sit here and make excuses. He won. I gambled the dice on myself. I knew I didn’t have the greatest gas tank coming in but I’m still a dangerous man. Six days, one day, six weeks, so hats off to him. We’ll do it again.
Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Masvidal wants the rematch and now believes he has the game plan to dethrone the champion.
“He knows that I’m no pushover. I just feel like I let a lot of people down. It was a sh*tty performance.”
“I’ve got a good formula in my head though on how to beat him the next time,” Masvidal said. “I thought I had the formula.
“Now I know the formula — it takes a lot of gas tank, a lot of conditioning, a lot more wrestling rounds with high-level guys. So I definitely got a square root on how to beat this guy.”
“The competitor in me, no I want to take everybody’s head off,” Masvidal explained. “I want to take his head off even more now that he beat me. I just feel like me and him now we don’t have to promote the next fight like that. We don’t have to talk about each other’s religion or ethnicities or nothing like that. He said some things that weren’t necessary and I’m sure I said some things that probably weren’t the best.
“I just think about the future generations. You don’t have to promote fights like that to sell pay-per-views. I heard that this card did great anyways but I feel it doesn’t have to be promoted like that, especially for the younger guys coming up. They don’t need to think you always need to talk sh*t to sell a pay-per-view or disrespect a man’s religion or anything like that. We’ll do it again.”
