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“I mean on a good day Jorge gets him out of there, and on a bad day, maybe the rounds are a little closer but [Jorge] still wins them. That’s what I see.”
UFC 244 went exactly according to plan, according to American Top Team coach Mike Brown.
Speaking to MMA Fighting following Jorge Masvidal’s three-round thrashing of Nate Diaz at Madison Square Garden, Brown said ‘Gamebred’ executed a near-flawless gameplan and believes a rematch would play out in much the same way.
“Honestly, it went a lot like we expected,” Brown said. “We were confident. We thought [Jorge] was better in those areas. We thought it would look like that. We thought Nate would be tough as hell. We thought it would be nearly impossible to put him away and everything kind of was as we expected.”
“I think we’d see the same thing,” Brown said about a possible rematch. “That was pretty damn one-sided. He won all three rounds, all three were pretty one-sided. I think that’s how it’s always going to be.
“I mean on a good day Jorge gets him out of there, and on a bad day, maybe the rounds are a little closer but [Jorge] still wins them. That’s what I see.”
Although Masvidal put on the most dominant performance of his career, beating Diaz to a bloody pulp and outclassing the MMA veteran in every area, fans are desperate for a rematch due to the controversial nature of the stoppage. Neurologist Dr. Nitin K. called a stop the contest at the end of round three due to the nasty cuts Diaz had sustained on the right side of his face. Diaz, however, who is notorious for overwhelming his opponents in the later rounds, insisted he was fit to continue.
Despite notable fan interest in a rematch, UFC president Dana White shot down the idea at the UFC 244 post-fight press conference, claiming Diaz had sustained much more damage than most viewers at home realize.
“No, (a rematch) doesn’t interest me right away. “I got asked a couple of questions tonight, ‘(What if) Diaz comes on the later rounds, if this fight had gone later, they didn’t stop it, what would happen?’ But it didn’t. It got stopped with cuts and Masvidal looked very dominant. He looked good, he’s looked good all year. He’s had nothing but great fights all year.”