Was the UFC on ESPN+ 1 main event stopped prematurely?
That depends on who you ask. Not surprisingly, UFC bantamweight champion, TJ Dillashaw, is furious that referee Kevin MacDonald intervened just 32 seconds into his flyweight title fight against Henry Cejudo last Sat. night (Jan. 19, 2019) inside Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Cejudo, however, believes it was a “great stoppage.”
“When your body goes limp like that, when you cut weight like that, thinking you’re gonna go out there and just take my belt from me, that’s not the way it works,” Cejudo said after the fight. “So I think it was a great stoppage. This is why MMA is sanctioned now because of refs. If I was to talk to that ref, ‘You’re okay, man. We were both in there. We saw him go limp a few times.’ Watch it again and you’ll see it.”
Watch it again right here and see for yourself.
UFC President, Dana White, is siding with Dillashaw and believes the bantamweight champion was cheated out of his chance to recover and fight back following a quick knockdown that led to a mad scramble for position.
“I thought it was an early stoppage, too,” White said during the post-fight press conference (watch it). “You’ve got two of the best guys in the world, two world champions in a superfight. Let them fight; let them finish. I’m not taking anything away from Cejudo, because the fight went 20 seconds and Cejudo busted him up, but Jesus Christ, let them fight. Horrible stoppage.”
Both Dillashaw and Cejudo are down for a rematch; however, the former wants to come back down to flyweight while the latter wants to bump up to bantamweight, because each combatant wants to become the next “champ-champ.”
For complete UFC Brooklyn results and play-by-play click here.