The UFC 189 welterweight title fight between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald is all but a shoo-in for 2015’s Fight of the Year, and is on the short list of the great MMA fights of all-time.
Despite what his boss claimed in the fight’s immediate aftermath, however, MacDonald did, in fact, know in what year the bout took place.
MacDonald suffered a violent TKO loss to Lawler in the fifth round of a bout he was winning on the scorecards in Las Vegas. At the UFC post-fight press conference, UFC president Dana White said that MacDonald didn’t know what year it was when he was asked by the doctor after the bout.
MacDonald, however, said otherwise, during his first interview since the epic fight.
“I knew what year it was,” MacDonald said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I knew everything that was going on.”
Combat sports doctors will ask fighters a series of basic questions after a knockout loss, in order to judge their mental capacities in the immediate aftermath of head trauma. According to MacDonald, who had suffered a broken nose and major facial lacerations, he simply wasn’t in the mood to answer the questions.
“She was just asking me so many damn questions,” MacDonald said. “And I was like just trying to get air and spit out all the blood that was in my throat, so I was just annoyed so I stopped answering her questions.”
That said, MacDonald understands the doctor was only doing her job.
“I was not in the mood to talk to the doctor, then,” he said. “I was in my own little world. It’s their job to check on you, that you’re fine, I’m not going to question the doctor, that’s their job.”