Chris Weidman has addressed the controversy surrounding his win at UFC Atlantic City.
The former Middleweight champion picked up his first victory since 2020 with a unanimous decision win against Bruno Silva. However, the win was initially a ruled was a third round TKO stoppage but following the bout, the result was changed to a technical unanimous decision after the ending of the contest was reviewed.
Both men had fell foul of accidental eye pokes throughout the contest with the final one sending Silva falling to the mat. Since the bout, some fans have questioned whether or not the bout should have been overruled to a no contest. Discussing the conclusion of the bout with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Weidman believes that the correct decision was reached. He said:
“I feel like it's a legitimate win. I won all three rounds, according to the judges scorecards. Is it the way I want to win? Hell, no. I don't want to poke a guy in the eyes. I've never poked a guy in the eyes ever in any fight. And then in this fight, I guess if you add up, it was two.
“And then the one, two, eye poke I guess as people are saying as the last one. And it's just unfortunate. You know, it's like, you know, I don't want that to happen. That's never happened before. And just I don't know if it was like the style of us fighting. Maybe my fingers were open too much, but it's just it's just tough with these gloves on.”
The aforementioned ‘one, two, eye poke’ was the poke that sent Silva reeling to the mat, ‘The All American’ sounded frustrated when reliving the final moments of the bout.
“You can make a very strong argument that my eye poke was by far the most devastating eye poke of all the eye pokes. And I didn't drop to the mat and try to get time.” Weidman felt that the way in which Silva’s reaction maybe suggests bad habits.
“On the last one, that's where he went down. My finger kind of like went underneath his eye. If you really zoom in, it wasn't in his eyeball like he did to me on that one with his thumb. I almost came out like trying to coach him because it's like my kids who I coach in wrestling.
“You're going to get poked in the eye, there's going to be things that happen to you on the mat. You can't just drop to the ground and turn around and expect the ref to know what's going on in your head and that he's seeing everything. It's just a bad habit and bad things happen when you do that. That's kind of what he got in the habit of just any time his eyeball got touched at all.”
Since his horror leg break against Uriah Hall, the bout marked only the second time he had re-entered the octagon. In the interview, Weidman also revealed that if he had been beaten badly in Atlantic City, he would have considered retiring.
“I think I probably would have retired if I didn't perform out there.” He said.
“You know, if he came at me and beat the crap out of me. Yeah, I think I was going to. I think I was going to put my glove down. I didn't so I didn't really even tell my wife or anybody that. But I was in the back of my head. I was like I and like because, you know, all my training partners, my coaches, everybody, you know, they think I'm better than ever.
“They can't believe how good I am. They think I become the one of the best guys in the world again. But in my head, I’m like, Man, I've done everything already.’ And I know, I know my potential and I know what they see. And I know I could be in there with anybody. But if I'm not able to put it together in the UFC and in the cage in front of everybody, then I'm not I'm not going to do it anymore. So if I didn't perform well, I think I was done.”
Watch the full interview, below:
