In the very first round of the UFC Fight Night 109 main event between Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira at last Sunday’s (May 28, 2017) FOX Sports 1 event in Stockholm, Sweden, “The Mauler” accidentally poked “Hands of Stone” in the eye, forcing a brief stop in action.
To hear Glover tell it, the incident definitely bothered his vision for the next few rounds.
“If I tell you that that didn’t disturb me, that’s a lie,” Teixeira said in an interview with MMA Fighting. “Everybody knows, a fighter or not, that getting poked in the eye like that, it was strong, so that disturbed me. But if I had gotten knocked out right after that, I’d definitely blame it. I went back in there without seeing anything. I was seeing three Gustafssons. It was all blurry, but I thought I’d have five minutes (to recover),” he said.
Glover did not get any time to recover, as Marc Goddard explains, time is only given if it’s a groin strike. And while Glover would’ve liked some time to get his bearings, he also didn’t want the fight to get stopped, which is why he chugged right along.
“I don’t know if you saw this, but I told the (referee) ‘of course I’ll come back to fight, but I need time to rub my eyes, wait to recover’. But he said ‘you get no time, you get no time. Or you’re good to come back or you’re not,’” he said.
“I didn’t know if they would cancel the fight, if it would be a no contest, but I didn’t want that. Of course not,” Teixeira said. “I’m a fighter and I believe I had chances to defeat him, otherwise I wouldn’t even be fighting. But I think without that eye poke, maybe I’d be able to impose my game, at least in the first round.”
After gaining his full vision back in round three, Teixeira says the problems were still the same, and it had nothing to do with his sight, as Gustafsson was simply too fast, and too good that night.
“Regardless, I think that, the way he was fighting, the speed… he was better, I couldn’t find him,” Teixeira said. “After my eye got better, I couldn’t find him. The result would really have been the same. Maybe not the knockout, a closer fight, but the result would have been the same,” admitted Glover, who fell victim to a superb walk-off knockout loss at the hands of Alex (see it).
“Congratulations to Gustafsson. He fought me in the best shape of my life, no injuries whatsoever. I have no excuses.”
You have to admire the honesty. The loss for Glover is his second in last three outings. As for what’s next for the hard-hitting Brazilian, click here to see our recommendation.