Former King of the Cage champion Tony Lopez fought Thursday night against Andenilson Clementino. That sounds like nothing of note, but after watching the fight, you’ll see why there’s a lot to talk about.
Lopez secured a tap out by rear-naked choke in the second round but refused to let go of the hold despite the referee pulling him off. Even worse, as the ref stepped in to separate the two, Lopez sucker punched Clementino.
He spoke to Aaron Tru of MMAprime.tv to explain his actions (h/t to Anton Tabuena of Bloody Elbow for the written quotes).
“I sink it in, he taps, but I said ‘it’s a fight.’ I’m heated. He hit me. So after the choke, I gave him a little hit. Some payback,” Lopez said.
The “hit,” as Lopez explains in the video, was a strike that hurt and cut the KOTC veteran. But Lopez has no remorse and explained that there’s more to the story than a simple, “You hit me, I hit you back” mentality.
There’s a lot more to it. Backstage, he’s in the back mad-dogging my wife. My wife is just walking by, and he’s mad-dogging her like he’s going to fight her. So you know, he’s disrespecting me right then and there, so going in, it’s a lot more personal, so yeah, I want to make him pay.
Second round, I go try to pay him back, but he’s too busy hugging me and trying to survive, so it irritated me more, so that’s what happened… It’s a fight first. People say it’s a sport, but it’s a violent sport, and I’m here to show the violent part of it.
Twitter user @grabakahitman provides some GIFs of the incident which you can find here.
To keep the shock factor going, the announcing team made no mention of the illegal blows and didn’t bring it up in the post-fight interview either.
Lopez is a career journeyman fighter who sports a good record but hasn’t been called up to the big leagues. His recent 1-4 stint likely didn’t help matters or the fact that his biggest highlight is from appearing on Bully Beatdown.
To me, this is worse than the Paul Daley incident, and I hope a hefty punishment comes down for Lopez. Sucker punches are bad enough, but when you add in the fact he held on to the choke for an extended period of time, he’s lucky Clementino didn’t sustain any serious type of injuries.
The sport (and yes Mr. Lopez, it’s still a sport) has come a long way from its crude beginnings, but every time something like this happens, it forces the sport to take a step back. Luckily, it didn’t happen in the UFC or Bellator, but incidents like this make it far too easy for the critics to paint a bad picture for MMA.
With athletic commissions handing out lengthy suspensions for the “PED” marijuana, I hope the athletic commission hands out a penalty that’s equal to this heinous act.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com