Following UFC 166, one of the hot-button topics has been the toughness of Junior dos Santos. The Brazilian survived another vicious beating at the hands of Cain Velasquez, but for many fans, it should have never gotten that far.
A popular thought is that Dos Santos’ coaches should have called the fight to save some brain cells for their fighter. One man who doesn’t agree is Yuri Carlton, Dos Santos’ Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach. He spoke to MMA Fighting about the controversial bout.
To be honest, I never considered throwing in the towel. If something like that ever happens, Luiz Carlos Dorea (boxing coach) would be the one to decide. I was hoping for the knockout all the time. In the fifth round, “Cigano” went for that choke. Anything can happen. We see a guy lose the whole fight and then win in the last round. It happens all the time. We’re not impressed by blood or anything like that, neither is Cigano. He always fights for the win, no matter what.
Actually, we almost never see a fighter win after being beaten for four rounds. We’ve only seen a fifth-round stoppage in the UFC on five occasions: Randy Couture vs. Ricco Rodriguez at UFC 39, BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez at UFC 107, Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen at UFC 117, Demetrious Johnson vs. John Moraga at UFC on Fox: Johnson vs. Moraga and Velasquez vs. Dos Santos at UFC 166.
Everyone could see that Dos Santos was done after the second round. Sure, he still tried to wing knockout punches, but they weren’t working against Velasquez’ perfect game plan. To his credit, JDS was able to land some nice short elbows from the clinch, but outside of the opening minutes of the first round, he offered little resistance to Velasquez’s grinding style.
I understand that Carlton isn’t in a position to toss in the towel because he isn’t the head coach, but at the same time, he still has a responsibility to his fighter to suggest the idea to the other coaches.
Also, considering that the Brazilian’s coaches knew their fighter was on “autopilot” after the second round, it’s clear that the fight should have never made it to the fifth round.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com