Chris Curtis can’t please everyone.
UFC 297 might not have resulted in the ideal outcome for his best friend and teammate, Sean Strickland, but Curtis got back in the win column with a split-decision win over Canada’s Marc-Andre Barriault. Never a stranger to backlash throughout the community for one reason or another, this time the 36-year-old Curtis targeted the evening’s commentary team.
“I get s—t on by ‘D.C.’ (Daniel Cormier) and Dominick Cruz every time I fight,” Curtis said on The MMA Hour. “No matter what’s happening. ‘D.C.’ was kinder than before, but Dominick Cruz is just like, ‘It looks like he’s sparring,’ and blah blah blah. Bro, [Barriault is] a solid man. He’s been knocked out once, I have been knocked out once. It’s not going to be easy to knock the other down, it’s just not. I hit him with some s—t that I’ve dropped people with, and he just kind of looked at it. I elbowed him a few times, I went to move in, he’s just staring at me like he’s back there. I hear Dominick Cruz say, ‘It’s just like a sparring match,’ and then, not to be a dick, but people are going to latch on to what the commentary says, and now I hear, ‘He didn’t even fight hard. It was a low-energy sparring match.’ Stand in front of me and let me hit you the same way.
“Marc-Andre Barriault is a f—king tank. The dude’s been stopped once, and that’s why,” he continued. “I don’t know where you guys found that man, but he’s a tank. I hit him with everything and the kitchen sink, and he stayed on his feet and he kept throwing back. The dude hit me with some s—t, and my face still hurts today. But because of Dominick Cruz’s stupid f—king commentary, I get to hear, ‘It’s a sparring match and low volume.’ … This is why I watch fights with the volume off. This is exactly why.”
More often than not, Curtis (31-10, 1 no contest) lives up to his “Action Man” moniker inside the Octagon. The win was the Middleweight contender’s fifth of his eight-fight UFC run.
Comparing his bout with the division’s title tilt that capped off the night, Curtis found the critique he received all the more comical as all the Middleweights were spotlight magnets this past weekend (Jan. 20, 2024). Since Cruz is a staple of the 135-pound Bantamweight division slowly sinking further into his commentary role, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever get to see Curtis test “The Dominator” the way he’d like.
“I cannot win to save my life,” Curtis said. “‘Aw, he’s low output.’ I did more than him and I threw more punches in this fight than the [Kelvin] Gastelum fight, which was applauded for the action. I had 40, 90, then 100-something punches in the round. I’m just like, I can’t make people happy. It’s fine. I’m happy with myself. I did the things I wanted to do. I didn’t make the same mistakes over and over and over. I’m happy. I can always do better, sure, but I’m proud of what I did and if the fans didn’t like it, I’m sorry. It’s a pro fight.
“But then again, I laughed when I saw people talking about the Strickland-Dricus [Du Plessis] fight,” he continued. “‘They’re just throwing sloppy punches’ and blah blah blah, so apparently Sean and Dricus are throwing big, sloppy, power punches with no technique, but according to Dominick Cruz and now the internet because everyone just latches on to commentators, ‘Aw, you’re just sparring.’
“Dominick Cruz, stand here Dominick Cruz, and let me hit you the way I was hitting him and see if it’s just sparring,” Curtis added. “No, we’re two large, solid men. I promise you guys, I was hitting him f—king hard, he was hitting me hard, I feel it since the fight. [Cruz] is like, ‘It looks like sparring.’ I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, the narrative is glorious.’ So I’m proud of myself, I’m very proud of myself.”
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